Battle Royale '03
by E for Emma
Summary: In an authoritarian Japan, a class of 15-year-old students are transported to a remote island, given weapons and told to kill each other in a sick version of musical chairs. (Based on Battle Royale by Koushun Takami) October 11--STORY COMPLETE
1. Part One

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part One  
  
Notes: This is based off the book/movie/manga Battle Royale. The book and manga are available in America, I've read the book twice and read the first volume of manga once. (I haven't seen the movie due to the fact that I am too poor to get a region-free DVD player.) For anyone who's not in the know about Battle Royale, it takes place in a modern Japan ruled under a dictator, and the dictator thinks that sending one class of 3rd year junior high students (that's high school freshman to Americans) from each prefecture in Japan to a deserted place (like an island which has been evacuated, a crumbling old jail or a mountain with fences around it), then arming them with randomly selected weapons and collars that will explode if you try to escape, then telling everyone to kill their classmates in a sick game of musical chairs is a great idea.   
  
The book is hugely long because it deals with 41 classmates and how they interact, so each "part" of this fic will contain many smaller chapters, which are numbered. It's because I don't want to torture you guys or myself with a bunch of tiny little parts. This fic takes place in the same place the book does, which is Okishima Island in the Seto Inland Sea. If I had a scanner I'd scan in the map of it from my book copy, alas I don't so I will describe the place here.  
  
Okishima is shaped like an oval on its side and divided into 10 gridded sections (A1-A10, B1-B10, et al). At the northernmost tip (sections A8 and A9), there is a cliff. Square C-10 (on the southeastern coast of the island) is a lighthouse. Square E-9 is a "tourist association" building. Square G-9 is a clinic. Square G-8 is a general store. Square H-9 is a harbor. Squares H-8 and I-8 are houses. Square G-7 is a school. The entire southern tip of the island is a beach. Square H-3 is a mountain, as well as Squares C-7 and C-8. Square C-4 is a Shinto shrine. That's about all the important features, aside from some hills and rocks, which can be expected on an island.  
  
Also remember: There are guard boats out in the water in the north, west, east and south of the island, so they can see you if you try to swim away or take a boat. Not like it would matter, because they took away all the boats. The kids are required to wear collars around their necks that pinpoint their locations and send it back to a computer inside the school building so everyone can monitor them. Should the kids try to step inside a forbidden square, the collars will explode. Should a kid try to take it off, the collar will explode.   
  
WARNING: Everyone in this fic has a dirty mouth.   
  
-Class List-  
  
For added fun, follow along and check off the names of every student that dies once they bite the dust!  
  
Class 3-A, Kitagawa Jr. High School, Kobe  
  
Males: Females:  
  
1 Masao Suzuki1 Shizuka Arai  
  
2 Kazuo Hanagata2 Tomoko Daidouji  
  
3 Takashi Hirai3 Kanako Niimura  
  
4 Shinji Asaba4 Junko Mizuboshi  
  
5 Toru Niimura5 Naomi Fujisaki  
  
6 Daisuke Kirishima6 Suzuko Harada  
  
7 Sho Satsuki7 Sayaka Ichiki  
  
8 Akito Kanzaki8 Tetsuko Matsutani  
  
9 Kiyoharu Moritaka9 Shuko Inada  
  
10 Kaoru Sengakuji10 Miki Aizawa  
  
11 Shinya Misao11 Asuka Nishima  
  
12 Junji Mitagawa12 Nanako Shizawa  
  
13 Shojiro Umeboshi13 Fujiko Sasei  
  
14 Toshiya Wakabayashi14 Minami Shimada  
  
15 Kazuhiko Yamatani15 Sakura Yanagi  
  
Mmmkay here we GO!  
  
Chapter 1  
  
'A study trip. If it gets me away from home, I'm in.' A bus full of weary 14-and 15-year-old students was headed down a seemingly endless highway, away from Kobe, away from home. 30 of them, 16 dressed in black button-down coats and black pants and 14 of them dressed in navy blue sailor-style blazers with matching navy pleated skirts. Wait a minute, 16? Aren't there 15 girls and 15 boys in the class? Enter Shizuka Arai (Female Student No. 1), sitting next to Shinji Asaba (Male Student No. 4), who was busy chatting with Sayaka Ichiki (Female Student No. 7), his girlfriend. Shizuka looked out of the bus window, her dyed red hair descending around her shoulders and accenting the black of her school coat. 'I wonder what kind of dorky shit they're going to make us do this trip. Can't top last year's, though.'   
  
In the front of the bus, Miki Aizawa (Female Student No. 10, also the class representative) and Asuka Nishima (Female Student No. 11) sat trying to chat with the bus driver, who would simply point with a fat finger to the yellowing notice to please not talk with the driver.   
  
In the back of the bus, Shojiro Umeboshi (Male Student No. 13) was sitting with his group of, well, gang members. They all wore exactly the same stoic "I don't give a fuck" expression, even the two gang girls. Then, Daisuke Kirishima (Male Student No. 6) wondered silently why he, or even Shojiro, went on this trip. It's a study trip, a school trip, and school is full of lamers anyway. Sometimes Shojiro's plans could be rather strange.   
  
"Hey Kiyoharu?" asked Masao Suzuki (Male Student No. 1) to his friend Kiyoharu Moritaka (Male Student No. 9). "Who do you have a crush on?"  
  
"Why are you asking me that? That's a stupid question. I don't want to answer that." Kiyoharu pouted. The mischievous grin on Masao's face grew larger and larger.   
  
"I'll tell you who I've got a crush on if you tell me who you've got a crush on," he offered.  
  
"Fine, fine." Kiyoharu shifted in his seat. "Spill it."  
  
"I think Mizuboshi's kind of cute."   
  
"Junko (Female Student No. 4)? The cross-country runner?"   
  
"That's the one. She has nice legs, huh? Now, who's yours?" Kiyoharu paused to think. Most of the girls avoided him. Now he was beginning to wonder why. Why did the girls give him the cold shoulder?   
  
"I don't have one."  
  
"Kiyoharu! Come on! You have to have one!"  
  
"No, I don't."  
  
"Stop lying, man, I can tell you are."  
  
"Masao, the girls avoid me. I don't know why, but they do. No girl would ever like me."   
  
"Fine, fine, be that way."  
  
"How long is it till we get there anyway?" Tomoko Daidouji (Female Student No. 2) asked from behind a manga magazine. She wasn't talking to anyone in particular, just anyone who would happen to hear her. Unfortunately she had a very quiet voice and nobody heard her over the racket everyone else was making by having to talk over everyone else. "Fine..."  
  
'This is getting boring,' Shizuka noted, tossing back her hair. 'I need some coffee.' She paused and then felt her eyes beginning to droop. 'Hey...I'm not that tired, am I? Wait a second...' She looked up towards the bus driver and noted he had on a gas mask. 'Gas mask? Why come we don't get no gas mask? Ish not fair. I need a gashk mashk...feelin' kinda dizzhy...whass Sengakuji tryin ta do?' Her eyes drooping, she looked over at Kaoru Sengakuji (Male Student No. 10), who was trying to break open the bus window with his fist. 'Hee. Kaoru so shilly, dem windows are plexiglash. Can't break em. I go sleep now.' Her eyes shut all the way and she slumped down in her seat, as did everyone else on the bus except for the driver. Even Kaoru gave up and slumped down into his seat in a deep sleep.   
  
---  
  
"Good morning, everyone!" The students all began to awake, their heads rising slowly from their desks.  
  
Desks?!  
  
The thirty kids were arranged in exactly the numerical seating order they had back at Kitagawa, but this was not Kitagawa Jr. High. First of all, Kitagawa had linoleum flooring while this room just had wooden flooring. Second of all, nobody remembered those motivational posters. Third of all, nobody remembered sheets of metal nailed over the windows. Fourth of all, who the hell was that standing at the lectern that would usually be occupied by Ms. Otani, their real teacher?   
  
'I don't remember Ms. Otani getting a sex-change operation,' Shizuka mused to herself, snickering. This man was short, kind of chunky and wore a brown suit that looked like he had stepped out of the year 1974. His salt-and-pepper short hair framed his fat face, which made him look unusually like a pig. 'Oink oink...We must have a sub or something. What day is it?' Shizuka looked down at her watch. 'Friday? 2:38am? It's too early. How come I feel so awake? It was 9:30pm last time I checked, that's only 5 hours of sleep. I feel awake as ever...' She looked over to see Miki looking around, confused, at her friends. In fact, everyone was looking around, confused, so Shizuka hopped on the bandwagon.  
  
"Once again, good morning. The gas worked perfectly, I should tell someone that this 5-hour stuff is much better than the old way. My name is Hirohiko Toyama. Just call me Mr. Toyama." Mr. Toyama wrote the kanji characters for his name on the old green chalkboard. "You are all probably wondering what's going on, right? What happened to the study trip? This is your study trip, children. Congratulations! You have been selected to participate in the 2003 Program!"   
  
Miki screamed. Everyone went into panic mode.  
  
2  
  
The Program was crafted by the Dictator who was in power back in the 40s. He made a speech that every first-year junior high student was required to study concerning why he instated the Program, but everyone forgot it after they were required to study it. Basically it was a sick version of musical chairs and all the winner got for seeing his or her classmates die and probably killing a few by him or herself was a meager lifetime pension and a paper signed by the Dictator. It wasn't rare for Shizuka to see a classmate crying and then the classmate citing a sibling or relative having been in the Program. But eventually their tears slowed down and then stopped. Time healed everything, especially deaths. Shizuka instead concentrated on a particularly large scuff on the toe of her black Chuck Taylors. Since Chuck Taylors were made in America, they were outlawed in Japan due to Japan and America being enemies. But that didn't mean you couldn't buy Chuck Taylors off the black market, which was frequented by high school kids who were sick of just the propagandistic bullshit that was everywhere.  
  
"Where are we, I bet you're asking? You're on Okishima Island." Mr. Toyama pulled a map of Okishima out of the ceiling and pointed to it. "Namely, at the school. Now you have to leave here so you can play the game. Notice the collars?" The students all raised cautious hands up to their necks and felt the cold touch of metal against their warm skin. "Yes yes yes, the surveillance collars. They tell me where you are at all times. Should you try to enter a forbidden zone after it becomes forbidden, it'll blow your head off. Should you try to escape by swimming, I will personally alert one of the guard ships to fire their whole arsenal at you. Should you try to take the collar off yourself, it'll blow your head off. Any questions?"  
  
Kanako Niimura (Female Student No. 3) raised her hand.  
  
"What about Ms. Otani?"   
  
"Yuriko Otani..." Mr. Toyama licked his lips in a strangely scary way. "She was much opposed to her class being in the Program. So...well..." He looked to the side. "I had to set her straight."  
  
"What did you do to her?!" Kanako screamed. Mr. Toyama silently motioned to three identical soldiers, who went out in the hall and brought in a large black bag with a zipper running down the middle of it. Some parts of the bag seemed lumpier than others. Some students were starting to put the puzzle pieces together and others hadn't quite figured it out yet. The soldiers set the bag down on the teachers' desk and unzipped it to reveal Yuriko Otani, dead. There was a singular bullet wound in her forehead, which meant that the back of her head, where the bullet would exit, was probably a goopy mess. The soldiers only unzipped the bag to reveal her face, which was probably good for the class as a whole, even though they began shrieking, groaning, feeling nauseous and panicking even more.   
  
"So I raped her and killed her. Sorry." Mr. Toyama shrugged it off.   
  
"You goddamn bastard, I'm going to fucking kill you!!" Kazuo Hanagata (Male Student No. 2) screamed, standing up from his desk.   
  
"A threat, Mr. Hanagata?" Mr. Toyama asked.  
  
"You're damn right it's a threat!"   
  
"Take him out," Mr. Toyama asked the soldiers. The middle one saluted and took out his shotgun, then aimed it at Kazuo's head and fired. The bullet ripped through Kazuo's forehead and he immediately fell to the ground, dead, falling too close to Tomoko's foot for her to handle. She gasped, her face turning white as a ghost.   
  
"If any more children want to end up like Mr. Hanagata here, just stand up and say so." Mr. Toyama looked around as every child in the room bit his or her tongue. "Perfect. An obedient class, that's exactly what I like. All right. I'm going to take a name out of this hat and that will be the first person called. I'll issue to that lucky person a day pack containing a randomly selected weapon, some food and water, a map and a compass. Then they will leave the school. I'll wait 2 minutes, then call the next person on the roll call. And so on and so on until everyone has been called. Now, 30 minutes after the last person leaves, this will become the first forbidden zone of the game. Square G-7, kids, remember that. Oh, one last thing. Take out the pencil and paper you'll find in your desk, then write 'We will kill one another' ten times on it. Once you are done, turn over your paper and I will begin roll call."   
  
Shizuka looked in her desk and took out the paper and generic pencil that was in it. 'We will kill one another? How lame.' Reluctantly she put pencil to paper and began to form the character for "we". She could smell the blood from Kazuo's corpse wafting through the air. 'Disgusting...The poor guy. I hope he died happy. He's in a better place now, right? I never knew Hanagata very well, but...Oh, it's too awful.' She turned back to writing the phrase over and over on her paper. Shizuka was known for being a fast writer, so she was done quickly. Right after she turned over her paper everyone else seemed to finish at exactly the same moment.  
  
"Everyone done? Perfect. Let us begin. And the first person is...Male Student No 11, Shinya Misao!"   
  
Shinya stood up from his desk and slowly walked towards the front. He was an otaku, not accustomed to much strenuous physical activity, and was obviously nervous about being the first to go. He picked up his day pack and exited, then everyone heard the staccato beat of his feet running down the hall. Shizuka scribbled down a message on her paper that said Wait For Me, then passed it on to Junko while nobody was looking. The roll call proceeded in numerical order (after Shinya came Female Student No. 11 Asuka Nishima, then Male Student No. 12 Junji Mitagawa, et al), everyone taking their packs, taking one last look at the class and then leaving. Shizuka decided to look at her weapon in the hall when it was her turn to leave.   
  
'Hm...an Uzi. This could come in very handy.' She could hold it with one hand. 'One-handed. How nice! I could actually do well in this game.' She placed the Uzi in her pocket instead of back in her bag, then headed out and was greeted by the stench of blood yet again.  
  
29 students remaining  
  
3  
  
Minami Shimada (Female Student No. 14) lay dead on the ground, a bullet wound in her chest. A puddle of blood was beginning to form around the wound, accented by the full moonlight. Shizuka paused by the corpse and wondered exactly who killed Minami. She was out in the open and decided to take up Minami's day pack. There had to be a weapon in there, right? Shizuka opened Minami's day pack. A police-grade revolver. 'Hey hey! Some bullets, too! This is good, Shizuka!' She was happy for a moment until she saw a small red bead of light moving up her legs. 'Beam of light?! That's NEVER good!' She rolled over, shielding herself with Minami's day pack as she heard the explosion of a bullet leaving the chamber of a gun that was not hers. At the last moment she hopped away from the bullet, feeling its warmth as it passed by her legs. 'What the fuck?!' She looked up to see Shinya standing on the roof of the one-story school, holding a sniper rifle with laser-guided targeting.   
  
"Fucking bitch!! Die!!" Shinya screamed, firing again. Shizuka ducked behind a tree and then aimed Minami's revolver, shooting and hoping it would hit. It did. Shinya toppled over, dead. Shizuka's eyes widened and she looked down at Minami's revolver, which was still warm from shooting. 'My first kill? I might be doing a lot of this...' Instead she sat down to wait for Junko to appear. Junko was Shizuka's closest friend, so she decided to trust Junko and only Junko during this game.   
  
Every person who exited the school would pause by Minami's corpse, then sigh and head on. Finally Shizuka saw Junko exit the building.  
  
"Junko!" she hissed. "Junko! Over here!" Shizuka waved a hand and Junko came towards it. "There ya go. What'll we do now?"  
  
"Fucking run for it, what do you expect?" Junko began to run and Shizuka followed. Junko was much faster than Shizuka, however, due to the fact that Junko was a cross-country runner.   
  
"Junko! Wait up!"  
  
"Shut up, we're just going to get away from here, this is where everyone is. Come on!" The two were headed for the houses, unfortunately so were a few other people who would only kill if someone came into the house they were hiding in. Fortunately there were about 80 houses, so there was a very small chance of anyone actually stepping into someone else's house.   
  
"Junko! My side hurts from running!"  
  
"Too bad!"   
  
"Junko...!!"  
  
"Shut up and run!"  
  
'Must be on her period...' Shizuka thought, feeling her day pack hit her side over and over again and hitting a bruise that was already there. Finally she saw some houses and Junko began to slow down.  
  
"So we're gonna hide here?"  
  
"At least for a little while. Regroup. Figure out what we're going to do." Junko took out her issued weapon, which turned out to be a nunchaku, and broke the window of the first house she saw with it. She looked inside, then nodded and snuck in through the window. Shizuka took a moment to gather her breath before following Junko in.   
  
"Whoa, these people are rich," Junko commented, looking around. "We could definitely make home base here."  
  
"That's too risky," Shizuka said as she tried out the sink. No water came out of the faucet. "No water?"  
  
"No electricity, either." Junko flipped a lightswitch. "They marooned us real good, didn't they?"  
  
"I'm just wondering how they can still do this. Hasn't some other country realized this shit isn't kosher? That letting hardly teenagers kill each other isn't cool?"   
  
"Obviously not, this has been going on since the 1940s."   
  
"Ssh. Listen, it's beginning to rain." Shizuka looked out the now broken window to see rain beginning to fall.   
  
27 students remaining  
  
4  
  
Shojiro told his entire crew to meet him at the Shinto shrine as soon as they could reach it. He himself was one of the first to be called, so he was almost all the way there. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind them, then heavy breathing. He kept his finger on the trigger of his machine gun and whirled around to see Sakura Yanagi (Female Student No. 15) standing there trying to breathe.   
  
"Sakura?"  
  
"I followed--you--here," she said, pausing for breath every so often. Sakura and Tetsuko Matsutani (Female Student No. 8) were the only two girls in Shojiro's group. Sakura was very attractive, with long shiny black hair and, well, a well-developed figure for a 15-year-old. She had hiked up her skirt a bit so she could run and was obviously flaunting herself for Shojiro. "So...we're going to all stick together, right?"   
  
"Yes, I suppose you could call it that." Shojiro shook a lock of hair from his face.   
  
"Great! They gave me a .45, is that a good weapon?"   
  
"Yes, I suppose." 'Dammit, Sakura, you ruined my plan. It was going to be the Umeboshi Special--you trust me but I betray you with a fucking bullet to the head. But you're beautiful. I can't kill you...'   
  
"Shojiro? Is something wrong? You seem...just out there."  
  
"Sakura, do you want to help me out with something?"  
  
"Yes!" Sakura smiled at Shojiro.  
  
"Perfect." Shojiro took out a 100-yen coin. "If it comes up heads I won't play this game, if it comes up tails I will play this game." He flipped the coin and looked at where it landed. "I have horrid eyesight, can you see what that is for me?"  
  
"Of course!" Sakura squinted at the coin. "It's tails."  
  
"Then the plan can proceed."  
  
"What plan?"  
  
"I'm summoning everyone to the Shinto shrine so I can...so I can kill them." He watched Sakura begin to back away. "But I won't kill you, Sakura."  
  
"Why? I'm part of your group, aren't I?"   
  
"Right, but..." Shojiro hesitated. Was he going to break his cold, emotionless exterior to tell Sakura how he felt about her? "But we could kill them together." Sakura grinned from ear to ear.  
  
---  
  
Tomoko, Naomi Fujisaki (Female Student No. 5) and Shuko Inada (Female Student No. 9) were running for their lives. They had crossed the path of Toru Niimura (Male Student No. 5), who was now dead-set on slaughtering all three of them. Sadly he only had hand grenades, so he had to corner them somehow. He saw a thick grove of trees coming up and got ready to pull the pin on a grenade as the trio stopped and noted they were cornered in. Then they turned right as the grenade hit the ground and exploded, tearing through their eardrums and killing them instantly. Toru stepped out from behind a tree and began to rummage around in their day packs, gathering Tomoko's whip (a whip?!), Naomi's shotgun and Shuko's throwing stars.   
  
24 students remaining  
  
5  
  
Shojiro and Sakura sat on a bench at the Shinto shrine, awaiting the arrival of Toru, Daisuke, Akito, Junji and Tetsuko. Both held their guns in their laps and both were silent. Uncomfortably silent, to be precise. And Sakura wanted to end it. She scooted the smallest bit closer to Shojiro, which he didn't notice. She scooted even closer to him and he still didn't notice. A small bell tolled in the wind and the rain fell not lightly or heavily but just in the middle. Finally she turned to him.  
  
"Shojiro?" she asked. "Um, I kinda have something to say."   
  
"Yeah?"   
  
"I...I know I have a past that usually makes guys afraid of me...you know, the whole...everything, but I stopped doing that and I'm trying to just go with one guy." She paused and bit her lip. "I want to be with you." As she went in for the kiss, she heard a rustle in the bushes nearby and Akito Kanzaki (Male Student No. 8) stepped out.   
  
"Akito! You're the first to arrive," Shojiro said, putting on his poker face. "Little story for you. Sakura knows this one. I flipped a coin to see if I'd bring you guys here so we could team up and fight against Toyama or if I'd bring you guys here and pump you full of bullets because I want to play the game. Well, it came up tails." He aimed his machine gun and shot Akito. "I'm playing. Sorry, you lose." Sakura began to giggle madly as she looked upon Akito's fresh corpse. His longish black hair was becoming matted with his own blood and it didn't look becoming on him. Then she turned back to Shojiro.  
  
"I was serious about what I said." She moved in for the kiss once again and was once again interrupted by the arrival of Junji Mitagawa (Male Student No. 12). She turned to face Junji and raised her .45.   
  
"You interrupted me! I was going to kiss Shojiro and you interrupted me!"  
  
"Shojiro? What's going on?" Junji asked, holding his sword. (Junji was on the kendo team so he was good with swords.)   
  
"I flipped a coin to see if I was going to play the game or not and...well, I am. Sakura, would you do the honors for me?"  
  
"Of course." Sakura held her gun level, which took both her hands, and shot Junji twice. She blew the stream of smoke away from the gun and turned to Shojiro once more, this time actually kissing him. She had kissed many a man before, but this one had something in it that the others didn't. It had actual feeling. Shojiro began to run his hand through Sakura's hair and Sakura wrapped her arms around his waist as they kissed with actual feeling until they had to pull away because they couldn't breathe anymore. The rain kept falling as the two smiled at each other, a gang guy and his gang girl. How sweet.  
  
22 students remaining  
  
6  
  
"Toru?" Kanako asked as she stepped over Naomi's corpse. She had seen her brother go by here, now where did he go off to? "Toru?" Sure, Kanako could trust her friends Fujiko Sasei (Female Student No. 13) and Tomoko (who was now dead, damn), but right now she wanted to be with her brother. "Toru, where are you?" Although Toru was a part of Shojiro's group and therefore usually acted like he didn't care about anything, he really did have a soft spot for his sister Kanako. They were, after all, fraternal twins. Toru was born first so he would become the protective older brother to dear Kanako, telling her about the newest threats to his group and telling her whom and where to stay away from. She really wanted to be with him so that she could be safe. She heard a stick crack in half. "Toru?" And raised her switchblade, her provided weapon.   
  
"Kanako?" Toru's familiar voice asked.  
  
"Toru!" Kanako ran to her brother and hugged him tightly.   
  
"I'm going to go see Shojiro," Toru said bitterly.  
  
"Can I come?" Kanako asked. Toru paused. "Pleeeease? I'm so afraid of being alone, Toru. Tomoko's dead and I don't know where Fujiko is, I'm just so glad I found you..."  
  
"Fine, fine, you can come too."   
  
"Yeah! You're awesome, Toru!" Kanako said, squeezing Toru a bit too tightly.  
  
"Kanako, I think you're cutting off my circulation..."  
  
"Sorry." Kanako let go of Toru. "So, where does Shojiro want you to go to?"  
  
"The Shinto shrine. It's north of here. See? We're in square E-4. It's not too long to the shrine, thankfully."  
  
"Do you think this rain is going to stop?" Kanako looked up.  
  
"Who knows? It's not like we could go in a house and see for ourselves, there's no electricity."   
  
"You're serious?"  
  
"Nope, none at all."  
  
"I'm scared, Toru. I don't want to die." Kanako held Toru's hand like she used to whenever they were crossing streets as small children.  
  
"I won't let you die, Kanako," Toru replied. "I promise."  
  
22 students remaining  
  
7  
  
Nanako Shizawa (Female Student No. 12), Fujiko and Asuka were all headed towards the northern mountain. Miki sent them all notes telling them to meet her there, then they would plan their course of action.   
  
"Yeah, they gave me these quill things," Nanako said to the amazed Fujiko and Asuka as she took out a small leather pouch containing ten small knives. Their blades were no thicker than a single porcupine quill and were as long as a normal pencil. "What about you two?"  
  
"I got hand grenades," Fujiko reported, shrugging. "Not excellent but not bad."  
  
"I heard an explosion a while back," Asuka suddenly said. "It sounded like a grenade. Did you kill someone?"  
  
"No. I still have all my grenades. What about you, Asuka? What did you get?"  
  
"This." Asuka took out a shotgun just like the ones used in shooting galleries at carnivals. "It's heavy."   
  
"Wow, a shotgun! Asuka, your weapon rocks!" Nanako said, amazed by Asuka's weapon. "Much better than these quill things! Don't you agree, Fujiko?"   
  
"It's all about timing," Asuka commented, shrugging. "Let's just get to the mountain. Miki doesn't like tardiness."  
  
22 students remaining  
  
8  
  
Tetsuko Matsutani (Female Student No. 8) was headed for the shrine. She was hoping Junji would be there so she could at least see him. 'If only I still had my virginity,' she lamented silently as she ran. 'I'd give it up to Junji. I'm going to die eventually, right? I might as well go out with a bang, if you know what I mean.' She snickered and then checked to make sure her sheathed double-bladed knife was still tucked securely into her skirt. At first she was kind of confused as to how it operated, but then realized that there was a damn cushion on it for you to put your hand on so you wouldn't stab yourself on either blade. Then she became concerned with wielding it properly by practicing on some trees. She had managed to slash Suzuko Harada (Female Student No. 6)'s leg as she walked by, but then saw Suzuko's ball and chain (mace?) and got away. Now all she wanted to do was see Junji. She saw the torii gates of the shrine up ahead and began to run faster, propelled maybe by her devotion to Junji.   
  
She saw the bench that Shojiro and Sakura were sitting on.  
  
"Shojiro! Sakura! It's me, Tetsuko!" she shouted as she got closer, then stopped right in front of Junji. "Jun...Junji? Dead?"  
  
"That's right," Sakura said in a strange deep voice.   
  
"What's going on here? Did Akito kill him? And then turn the gun on himself?" Tetsuko was alarmed. Junji's blood was starting to stain the sole of her shoe.   
  
"We killed him," Shojiro replied.  
  
"WHAT?!" Tetsuko unsheathed her knife. "I'm going to kill you both!"  
  
"Wrong answer," Sakura answered, once again leveling her gun and shooting Tetsuko. The .45 bullet tore through her cerebral cortex and Tetsuko died with her last thought being about Junji. Her corpse fell on top of Junji's, her knife falling nearby.  
  
"Now we only need Daisuke to come," Sakura reported. "This is fun!"   
  
21 students remaining 


	2. Part Two

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Two  
  
9  
  
Masao held his axe steady as he walked down the street of the residential area. He wasn't afraid of being alone in this, just afraid of being found by someone willing to play the game. He had already cut down a few trees on the way here just to see how sharp the axe really was, then decided not to abuse it just in case it broke or wore down too far later on. The rain soaked through his white shirt (he wasn't wearing his school coat) and dripped down the ends of his hair, which he usually wore spiked up. However, Elmer's Glue didn't react well with water and his hair was now a sopping, dripping mess. All he wanted was to go in a house and get a towel to wipe down his shirt. He wandered down the street, axe still in hand, when he saw her. He saw Junko standing by the window she broke herself and knew he wanted to go see her.   
  
"Who's there?" Junko asked as Masao approached. Shizuka was sitting on the couch with a woolen blanket wrapped around her petite figure, being quiet.   
  
"It's Suzuki," Masao answered calmly.  
  
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?"  
  
"I've got an axe...but all I want is a towel."  
  
"A towel?" Junko turned to Shizuka. "Is a towel a good intention?"  
  
"It's raining out there, he's probably soaked to the bone. Let him in," Shizuka answered, wrapping the blanket around herself even tighter.   
  
"You may enter," Junko said to Masao, who climbed in through the window. "You want a towel?"  
  
"Yeah. That'd be nice." Masao gathered a bunch of his hair in his hand and wrung it free of water. "Who else is in here besides you, Junko?"  
  
"Just Shizuka," Junko answered, going to a small closet and pulling out a fluffy cream-colored towel. She walked back to where Masao was standing (and making puddles on the floor) and handed him the towel. "We're just going to stay here for a while. Shizuka's cold, too."   
  
"I'm cold," Shizuka added gleefully. "Not used to no heaters."  
  
"Looking for anyone else in particular?" Masao asked Junko. Shizuka nervously eyed Masao's axe and turned away from him.   
  
"Not really, just whomever comes by, I suppose." Junko sighed. "This is so scary." Shizuka silently agreed.  
  
21 students remaining  
  
10  
  
Sayaka Ichiki (Female Student No. 7) only wanted to see one person, her steady boyfriend Shinji Asaba (Male Student No. 4). She could hardly read her map, what with it being so rainy, so she was relying on her compass (she could hardly read that, though) and her sense of direction to guide her down to the southern coast, where Shinji told her he'd be waiting. Sayaka was soaked with rain and every part of her felt wet, even the bottom of her socks. She made a squishy sound as she walked. How annoying. She had a samurai-style sword's sheath latched to her skirt, but she had no idea if she could even use it correctly. 'This is 2003, who the hell uses a samurai sword anymore except on terebi period dramas? Certainly not a teenage city girl such as myself.' She sighed. "I hope Shinji has a better weapon than this...or a clue as to how to use it.' Shinji. She'd been with him since halfway through first year of junior high. Sometimes the really, well, mature girls like Sakura or Tetsuko would ask her if she'd slept with him yet, to which a resounding no was the answer. Sayaka loved Shinji with all her heart, but felt she couldn't just mess up their wonderful relationship by letting her carnal desires take center stage.   
  
Actually she couldn't really trust anyone except Shinji at this point. Not even Miki Aizawa or the other "good" girls and especially not Sakura, Tetsuko or Shojiro's crew (little did she know most of them were dead). 'At this point it's just me against the world,' she lamented as she peered at her compass yet again, then pressed the light button on her watch. 5:57am? She was one of the last to leave the school, after all, so it factored out nicely now that she thought about it. Hey, the sun was going to rise soon under all this rain, maybe she and Shinji could watch it come up together. Wouldn't that be nice? She kept walking on until she heard a strange crackling noise.  
  
21 students remaining  
  
11  
  
"Hi everyone, it's Mr. Toyama here! I've got some announcements to make. First, the forbidden zones. At 7 am, I-2; at 9 am, B-5; and at 11 am, C-4. Okay? Mark those on your maps. Now for the deaths. First, the males: No. 2 Kazuo Hanagata, No. 8 Akito Kanzaki and No. 12 Junji Mitagawa. Now, the females: No. 2 Tomoko Daidouji, No. 5 Naomi Fujisaki, No. 8 Tetsuko Matsutani, No. 9 Shuko Inada and No. 14 Minami Shimada. Okay? I'm going to make another announcement at noon. Good luck, everyone!"   
  
"What was that bullshit?" Shizuka asked from her viewpoint on the couch.  
  
"Apparently Mr. Toyama made an annoucement," Junko answered. "You get the third forbidden zone, Masao?"  
  
"Yeah, it's C-4."   
  
"Thanks. He announced who died and when areas become forbidden. Most of Shojiro's crew is dead except Daisuke and Sakura."  
  
"Shojiro's crew? You'd think they would've lasted longer than that!" Shizuka exhaled a deep breath. "Maybe they all commited hara-kiri or something."   
  
"It's possible," Masao added. "So we're down to 23 now? It seems so surreal. Just yesterday it was a normal school day, now look at us." Shizuka nodded silently, preferring not to talk much. Plus she was still cold, dammit.  
  
21 students remaining  
  
12  
  
As the sun rose somewhere behind the rain, Kiyoharu Moritaka (Male Student No. 9) was still alone. He used his fist to punch open the door to the general store and was now inside, raiding the place. He threw a few tea bags into the day pack he had stolen from...oh hell he forgot, it was empty, someone harvested all the valuables from it except the bag itself. Then he went over to get to the medicine. Instead of being choosy with what he needed he decided he'd do a Noah's Ark and take two of each item, watching as brightly colored boxes dropped quietly into the day pack. He wanted to make sure that if someone else found the general store after he did that they wouldn't find half of anything they were looking for. He was greedy like that.   
  
He heard a rustle and turned, pistol in hand, to see a rat crawl across the table. 'Just a rat...got my adrenaline up for nothing.' The day pack was beginning to bulge as Kiyoharu finished his "shopping". Finally, he declared himself done and headed out of the door towards the houses. This little special bonus that he found in his day pack was starting to help. It was a Palm Pilot-sized machine that showed where he was with a circle and where other people were with asterisks. The only problems were that he didn't know who the asterisks were and if the asterisks were dead or not. But all he knew was that he should go find Toshiya Wakabayashi (Male Student No. 14) or Masao.   
  
21 students remaining  
  
13  
  
Toshiya was with Takashi Hirai (Male Student No. 3) and they were headed northwards. They had no real purpose for going northwards other than to maybe explore the island a little, get to know it better. More like getting to know their future graveyard better. Toshiya was armed with a diver's knife and Takashi with what both guys described as a big wooden pole, because, well, it was a big wooden pole. The two would always descend into childish snickers whenever Takashi mentioned his big wooden pole (Author: I -know- some of you guys are snickering, admit it).   
  
"Maybe you'll fight someone with that big wooden pole," Toshiya thought aloud right as the duo bumped into Daisuke, headed for the Shinto shrine. "Speak of the devil," Toshiya quickly added as Daisuke drew his shotgun and Toshiya unsheathed his diver's knife. Takashi quickly hit Daisuke on the side of his head with the big wooden pole and then hit the same place with more force, watching as Daisuke fell to the ground. He wasn't dead, just knocked out.  
  
"Why don't you slice him up?" Takashi suggested.  
  
"Nah...don't feel like killing right now. Besides, someone'll probably finish the job later."  
  
"We are so cool, Toshiya."  
  
"I know." Toshiya smiled his "hooray for me" smile as he and Takashi kept on towards the north. "Look, it's a big mountain-type thing. Should we go up there?"  
  
"Sure, why not? We could go up the mountain and look around to see everyone going places." The two boys suddenly stopped when they heard the sound of a chain swinging around over and over again. They stood at the ready with their weapons as Suzuko walked by with her ball and chain in hand. She looked over at them with just one side of her face and the usually sweet and innocent face of Suzuko Harada turned into the cold, lifeless face of a killer. Blood from where Tetsuko slashed her leg was still dripping down, turning her white sock red and even staining some of her shoe.   
  
"Harada!" Takashi exclaimed, surprised. "Hey, you're hurt, are you all right?"   
  
"Put down your weapons," Suzuko answered.   
  
"Why? We don't want to hurt you, this is just precautionary."   
  
"I said put down your weapons!!" Suzuko swung her ball and chain around, obviously not knowing very well that it wasn't light and had its own trajectory. She held it away from herself as if it were a cat that used to be sweet but then turned fierce and squeezed her eyes shut as she heard the sound of ball hitting pole. With a loud crack, part of Takashi's wooden pole fell down to the ground, leaving a sharp splintered end where a smoothed tip used to be. Suzuko looked shocked at what she had done and quickly ran off, her ball and chain swinging around madly. Takashi paused by the end of the pole, which now lay discarded on the ground. Then he looked at Toshiya then back down at the pole.   
  
"Girls are weird," he noted. Toshiya nodded.   
  
"She was headed north. What a psycho. Let's go south instead, who knows what she'll try if we see her again? She might even learn how to use that ball and chain."  
  
21 students remaining  
  
14  
  
Daisuke was smarter than that. When he heard the announcement that almost everyone in Shojiro's group was dead, he suspected the worst. 'But come on, Daisuke, would Shojiro summon everyone to him so he could kill them? Seriously?' He paused and twirled his shotgun around in his hand. 'To be honest, yes.' Daisuke went about halfway to the Shinto shrine (he wasn't good at running and didn't have a lot of stamina) when Mr. Toyama's announcement was made and then turned back around. He was now in a farmhouse in square E-6. The farmhouse wasn't much to write home about, it was just, exactly as the name stated, a farmhouse. But it was a good place to hide. There were lots of bales of hay that could be a good place to dive into should someone come along looking for blood.   
  
Daisuke was sitting on top of some bales that he shaped into a couch of sorts. "Ah, Shojiro, you fooled Akito, Junji and Tetsuko, but you won't fool me," he remarked aloud to nobody in particular. "They were fools anyway." He shifted his weight on the hay couch and it fell through. "Dammit!" His echoing expletive bounced off the smelly walls. "This place smells like horse shit," he added. Suddenly he heard someone heaving against the door, which had wheels and was on a track but was still pretty heavy. Daisuke held his shotgun at the ready as the door opened and the cold rainy wind blew in.  
  
"Who's there?" he asked.  
  
"Satsuki," a male voice answered. It was Sho Satsuki (Male Student No. 7), who was always trying to get into Shojiro's group. He was the yakuza boy poser of class 3-A. He held a sickle in both of his hands as he entered the farmhouse. "And you are?"  
  
"Daisuke," Daisuke answered. 'And you're about to die,' he added to himself. "Hey, you know one of the rules in this game that should always prevail?"  
  
"No, what's the rule?"  
  
"Don't trust anyone." Daisuke stood up and pointed his shotgun at Sho so it was pretty much rammed into his jugular. Sho held his sickle to Daisuke's jugular. "Especially not Shojiro Umeboshi." He pulled the trigger. Sho's body was thrown back with the force of the bullet and a circular wound appeared on his throat. He fell to the ground with his sickle still in hand. Right as Sho fell, however, the sickle grazed Daisuke's arm. It wasn't much, he'd sustained more serious injuries before, but it did sting a bit.   
  
20 students remaining  
  
15  
  
Sayaka was on the sandy southern shore of the island, watching as the waves rolled in and out, over and over. Since it was still raining, the sea was fiercer than it would normally be. She squinted and saw the lights of the southern guard ship, then looked farther out and saw lights. 'That's right, there are other islands around here. What are they called again? Megijima and...um...the other one, what's it...That's right, Ogijima. If I could only swim faster, I could try to make a fast break for Megijima.' She unsheathed her sword and began to scratch into the sand, making deep canyons and watching as the sea filled them up, then washed them away. 'Shinji said he'd be here by now, where is he?'   
  
---  
  
Well, Shinji was running into a bit of a problem going to the southern shore. Those problems had names and their names were Shojiro and Sakura. The two grew tired of waiting for Daisuke to show and eventually gave up on him altogether, so they went exploring and found Shinji. Shinji was given a set of blowdarts as his weapon so it wasn't really possible to fire blowdarts while running. He managed to lose them by hiding away but sustained a bullet wound in his right wrist which hurt like no other. Shinji knelt down in some bushes to look at his wound. It was steadily dripping blood and stung terribly, but it didn't appear to be in a place where it could be fatal. Sure, it might paralyze him but there were prosthetic hands on the market nowadays (and since they were made in Japan, not America, they were relatively easy to find), weren't there? He was also left-handed. It wouldn't matter when it came to writing. Then he noticed that the blood was running onto a bracelet Sayaka gave to him. Sayaka wove a bracelet of purple and black string that was about as thick as floss, then called it a "friendship bracelet" and put it on Shinji's arm. When they started going out she upgraded it to a "lover's bracelet" and requested that Shinji still wear it. He wore it everywhere, even in the shower and to sleep. It was a symbol of his dedication to Sayaka and now his own blood was dripping onto it.   
  
'Dammit...' He stood up out of the bushes and continued on down to the shore, pausing to note that he was in square I-5. He could hear the not-so-gentle whooshing of the waves and knew he had to be close to her. The beach was becoming visible and the ground beneath his feet morphed from being dirt to being sand. He could see her standing there, her back turned to him.   
  
"Sayaka!" he called. Right after he shouted her name, an explosion rang out and he dropped onto the ground. He spat sand out of his mouth and tried to stand back up but found it was impossible to do. There was a sharp pain in his back, like there were thousands of needles surging up and down and he was powerless to do anything about it. Sayaka turned and gasped, putting her hands over her mouth.   
  
"Shinji!!" she screamed, running towards him and sitting down by him. She put her hand on his back and it felt warm. Too warm. She pulled back her hand and discovered a large amount of blood on it. "Blood?!"  
  
"They got me," Shinji answered quietly.   
  
"Who got you?"   
  
"Shojiro...Sakura...they chased me here...shot me in my wrist...and back..."  
  
"Don't talk too much, Shinji," Sayaka pleaded. She brushed back some of her bob-cut hair with the hand that was bloodied. "Are you going to be all right?"  
  
"I...don't know, Sayaka," Shinji replied, being honest. "It hurts...so much."   
  
"It's going to be all right," Sayaka said, placing her hands on his face. "I promise." Her eyes were blurring up with warm tears.   
  
"I don't think so, Sayaka...I feel weak."  
  
"You're just tired," Sayaka insisted. "You'll be fine! We'll get you to the clinic. They have to have something there that can help you, right?"  
  
"But, love, I have two bullets lodged inside my body..."  
  
"Doesn't matter! I'll remove them with tweezers! They can't be that big, can they?" The tears were rolling down Sayaka's cheeks now, one after the other. "I can't lose you!"   
  
"Sayaka..." Shinji reached with his wounded arm up to touch Sayaka's face and smiled wearily. "Just...remember all the fun we used to have...together."   
  
"No..." Sayaka whispered. "Please..." With a grunt Shinji forced himself to sit up.   
  
"I love you...Sayaka..." Shinji kissed Sayaka once more and she felt the last breath leave his body.   
  
"No..." she repeated. "Shinji!!" she wailed loudly, then let out another scream of pain and slumped down next to his dead body and wept, her hand across his chest, trying to will his heart to begin beating again. Shinji's blood was staining the sand red.   
  
19 students remaining  
  
16  
  
Miki was still awaiting the arrivals of Suzuko, Asuka, Nanako and Fujiko. Now that Tomoko was dead their group was only going to have five people, but that was good enough, right? Safety in numbers was what she had been taught as a small child and that lesson carried on all the way up to 15. Miki's provided weapon was a police gun, just like the one her father used. Her father was a high-ranking police officer in Kobe and he was very well-known, with a good reputation. She didn't know that her dad usually used that police gun to kill civilians, not just fire warning shots. Under the Dictator's ruling, a police officer could shoot anyone who was a threat without even having to ask. Act out of hand and you'd get a bullet to the head. Miki was relatively naive for her age, still living under the delusion that the world was a really nice place to live and everyone would be kind to you.  
  
She was inside a viewing platform which, thankfully, had a roof. There were some binoculars there which she would peer through every so often, but visibility was low due to the rain.   
  
'It's not fair that I got selected for this,' she lamented to herself. 'My dad works for the government, doesn't that kind of excuse me from the Program?' She began to paw around in her day pack, shoving aside her police gun and the extra bullets, moving the nasty government-provided bread and water, digging past the map and compass. Her hands came upon a small rectangular object and she pulled it out. It was a cell phone! Her cell phone, to be exact, what with the Hello Kitty faceplate and the little alien dangling from the small nubby antenna. Miki turned on the phone and her welcome screen came up just as normal. The backlighting for the display came on and everything glowed blue. Miki was focused on the top left-hand corner where there was a picture of a cellular tower and some blocks next to it. One block meant no signal, two blocks meant weak signal, three blocks meant clear signal. The blocks switched awkwardly from one to two for a few minutes, then finally settled on THREE! Miki did a small dance of joy and began to tap in her home phone number, then hit send and heard the glorious, glorious ringing. After two rings, the other end picked up.  
  
"Hello?"  
  
"Daddy, it's Miki! I got selected for the Program, oh Daddy, I'm so scared, I'm on Okishima Island, please come save me, I don't want to die, don't let me die, please don't let me die..."  
  
"Miss Aizawa, I must not have mentioned that phones won't work on this island. Not even cell phones. There's a temporary cellular tower here and every signal is relayed through it before being sent out to anywhere else in Japan. Therefore, all calls out of here are relayed to us." Miki clamped her hand over her mouth and felt her heart pounding in her throat. That voice didn't belong to her father, it belonged to...  
  
"Mr. Toyama?!"  
  
"That's right, Miki. Now you better hang up. You can't get out of here." Mr. Toyama hung up. Miki pulled the phone away from her ear, then looked down at it, confused. 'No calls...no way to send an SOS...I'm trapped...I'm trapped...' Like a broken record, her mind repeated the same thought over and over, even as she shut off her phone and placed it back in her day pack. 'I'm trapped, I'm trapped, I'm trapped..." She backed into one of the corners of the viewing platform and hugged her knees. Her heart was still pounding like a sledgehammer and suddenly she felt nauseous. She truly was trapped, wasn't she?  
  
19 students remaining  
  
17  
  
It was approaching 9:00am when Kiyoharu reached the house that Shizuka, Junko and Masao were in. Surprisingly, there was only one other house that was occupied by anyone and that was Kaoru and Kazuhiko Yamatani (Male Student No. 15), whom he decided to just leave alone. He didn't think of them as enemies, nor did he think of them as friends. Kiyoharu knocked on the door of the house, then saw someone approaching. Someone wrapped in a blanket?   
  
Shizuka opened the door. She was normally pale due to the fact that she hated the outdoors, but her face was a bit paler than normal. She had two blankets wrapped around her body.  
  
"What are you armed with and what are your intentions?" she asked mechanically.   
  
"I just have a pistol but I raided the general store and got all kinds of cool junk. I also know Masao's here."   
  
"Masao," Shizuka called into the house. "Kiyoharu's here." She turned back to Kiyoharu. "Please, come in, and place your bounty on that table...the Western-style one." Kiyoharu placed the second day pack down on the Western-style table and waited for Junko and Masao to appear. Shizuka didn't try to have a conversation with him, in fact every time their glances met she would turn away shyly.   
  
'He's right here, with me, and I'm wrapped up like some old granny,' Shizuka thought silently. 'I look like an idiot. And it's all because it's so goddamn cold in here.' She could feel her heartbeat getting faster and faster. 'Maybe he could warm me up?'  
  
"So, what did you get at the general store?" Junko asked.   
  
"A whole boatload of stuff." Kiyoharu unzipped the day pack and began to take items out of it. "First of all, food and drink." He had about 10 bottles of water, bags of miso soup (just add boiling water), bread that was actually good, vegetables, some chicken, cookies, teabags, coffee beans, cereal and assorted candies and snacks. "Second of all, since there's no electricity we can't cook, right? Wrong. Behold the splendor of propane." He took out a camping propane grill and two canisters of propane. "Third off, even though there's a clinic it's always a good idea to have medicine." He had two boxes of aspirin, painkillers and cold medicine, as well as rubbing alcohol, bandages of all sizes and gauze. "And fourth of all..." He took out five flashlights and batteries. "Flashlights, although you might want to cup them with your hands so people don't see you. There are still people willing to play the game."  
  
Junko's stomach began to rumble loudly.  
  
"I haven't had anything to eat except that nasty bread," she said, shrugging.   
  
"We should have some food now," Masao suggested.   
  
"I want hot food," Shizuka added.   
  
"It's breakfast, we'll just have some cereal or something and I can make some tea for Shizuka." That was the first time Shizuka actually heard Kiyoharu mention her name, let alone putting the word "for" in front of it, meaning that he was going to do something FOR her, meaning that maybe he cared about her too? She knew she was blushing and even though she was still cold she was warmed up a small bit with the thought that Kiyoharu Moritaka might actually return her affections.   
  
"I'm up for it," Masao said, nodding slightly. "What about you two?"  
  
"Sure!" Junko and Shizuka answered in unison.   
  
"The tea'll take a few minutes, but the cereal can be eaten now," Kiyoharu informed the group. Junko began to search the cabinets in the kitchen for some bowls and spoons, which she found quickly. She also found a cup for Shizuka's tea and brought them all back to the dining room table. Kiyoharu was firing up the propane grill and asked for Junko to go get a small pan for him. She nodded and quickly returned with a small pan. Kiyoharu thanked her, then placed the pan on the grill and poured some water in it, watching for it to boil. The rest of the group was serving cereal to themselves, then sat down in the living room to eat it.  
  
"You like him, don't you?" Junko asked on a piece of paper she found in the dining room. Shizuka hesitated before responding.  
  
"Yeah...I do, but don't tell him. I want to tell him."  
  
"When?"  
  
"When the time is right. Here he comes." Shizuka quickly hid the piece of paper as Kiyoharu came in with her hot cup of tea.  
  
"Be careful, it's really hot," he warned her.  
  
"That's what I want," she responded, sipping daintily from the cup. "It tastes so good," she said, delighted that someone actually had the great idea of raiding the general store.   
  
"So, Kiyoharu, what have you been up to?" Masao asked Kiyoharu.  
  
"Well, I have this special bonus in my bag, it's a little thinger that tells me where people are, but it doesn't tell me if they're dead or not. I found you guys with it. Before that, I raided the general store. That's about it. I was one of the last to leave the school, only Shuko, Kaoru and Miki were after me. Miki was a wreck. She couldn't stop crying and whimpering that it wasn't fair."  
  
"Her dad's a police officer," Junko added. "That's why she says it isn't fair to her."   
  
"Obviously she doesn't know jack about equality," Masao commented. "We're all the same, just students. Our background doesn't matter when it comes to the Program. Hell, you could be an illegitimate child of the Dictator himself and they wouldn't care."  
  
"Nn," Shizuka said as she swallowed another sip of tea. "That's not true. You just know that the Dictator would have someone kill off any illegit children of his. So technically the illegit kids would die, just like in the Program, just at someone else's hand." Kiyoharu looked over at Shizuka as she talked and noticed that there was a large scar on her right cheek with some concealer marks down the side of her cheek. The concealer she used to conceal any scars on her face wasn't waterproof, obviously, as it dripped off when she was running.   
  
'I wonder how that scar got there,' he thought as he tried not to stare at it. Shizuka finished off her tea with one last slurp.  
  
"So, we're just hiding out here?" Kiyoharu asked.  
  
"Yeah, our square isn't in the forbidden list that Toyama announced, so we're good for the time being. If our zone is announced at noon, then we have to go as soon as possible."  
  
"...but take some stuff with us, of course," Shizuka finished.  
  
"Of course," Masao added.  
  
19 students remaining  
  
18  
  
Toru and Kanako got to the shrine a short time after Shojiro and Sakura left, so they played jan-ken-pon to decide where exactly they went. Kanako and her bet of "south" won, so the twins began to head south, towards the beach.   
  
"You know, this place is pretty," Kanako commented. "If I came here on a vacation, you know, a normal vacation, I think I'd have fun. I mean, the beach is probably really nice." She stepped in a puddle and mud splashed onto her boots. "Yuck! That's gross."  
  
"I wonder if the rain'll ever stop, or at least let up," Toru thought out loud as he looked up.  
  
"Dunno, those clouds are really dark. It could rain for a long time." Kanako tried to wipe some of the mud off her boots, but instead got her hands filthy. "Listen, you can hear the waves if you stay silent. The beach can't be too far, can it?"  
  
"Ssh! Listen," Sakura whispered to Shojiro. The two were hiding in the same bushes Shinji hid in to check on his wrist wound. "Doesn't that sound like the Niimura twins?"   
  
"It does," Shojiro replied. "He never came, either. Nor did Daisuke."  
  
"Maybe they figured it out?" Sakura suggested, shrugging.   
  
"Dammit, they should've obeyed like a circus monkey and come anyway."  
  
"Shit happens, Shojiro. Do you wanna go for it?" Sakura held her .45 at the ready.   
  
"Why not?" Shojiro held his machine gun at the ready and the duo jumped out of the bushes, weapons ready. Kanako gasped in shock and Toru stood in front of her defensively, holding a grenade.   
  
"Toru, they've..."  
  
"I know they have guns, Kanako, just get as far away from here as possible."  
  
"Toru!!"  
  
"Don't worry about me, Kanako, just go down to the beach and wait for me. I'll be there momentarily." Kanako nodded, turned on her heel and began to run wildly towards the shore, leaving Toru with Shojiro and Sakura.  
  
"Why didn't you show?" Shojiro asked.  
  
"I got an idea of what exactly you wanted to do with us once I heard the announcement that Tetsuko, Akito and Junji were gone. I'm not as stupid as you think I am, Shojiro." Toru pulled the tab on the grenade and threw it, then ran after Kanako. Shojiro and Sakura watched it soar through the air, then began to run in whatever way their legs could propel them to get away from that thing before it exploded. They ducked down as it exploded and weren't hurt, but the explosion did numb their eardrums for a short time.   
  
"Are you all right?" Shojiro asked Sakura as he helped her to her feet.  
  
"I'm fine," Sakura replied, dusting off her skirt. "Just kind of dazed. Where did they run off to?"   
  
"I think I saw them go north," Shojiro said after a short pause. After another pause for Sakura to stretch her legs, the two turned and began to head north.  
  
Kanako and Toru, on the other hand, were getting closer to the beach. Neither twin had 20/20 vision, so they didn't see Sayaka slumped over Shinji's body at first, but they did start to hear her loud wailing cries pretty early on. Finally Kanako got close enough to see it was Sayaka and Shinji.  
  
"W-who's there?" Sayaka asked, sniffling.   
  
"It's me, Kanako Niimura. Don't worry, I don't want to hurt you. Are you all right?" Sayaka looked up at her, eyes red, trails of many tears on her face.  
  
"They killed him," she answered deftly.  
  
"Who killed who?" Toru asked.  
  
"Shojiro and Sakura. They killed Shinji." Sayaka sniffled again. "Two shots, one in the wrist and one in the back. They stole my only love from me..."  
  
"Oh, Sayaka, I'm so sorry," Kanako gasped quietly.  
  
"It's all right." Sayaka took out her samurai sword and Kanako took a step back. "Oh no, I'm not aiming for you two." She set the blade down, then grabbed it about halfway up and sliced her right wrist with it, then turned it around and sliced her left wrist. "I can't live without him." She smiled as she looked down at her two cuts and watched the copious amounts of blood flow from them. "So I'll die with him. Easy enough, huh?" Kanako was frozen in horror as the blood dripped down onto the sand. "Well, Kanako, thanks a lot for caring, I appreciate it. But...I'm leaving now." Sayaka smiled wearily and the last of her tears descended from her eyes as her life quickly drained from her. She died a few seconds later. Toru moved her so that she was locked in an embrace with Shinji and closed her eyes in respect for the dead.  
  
"It's so horrible, isn't it?" Kanako asked a minute later. The waves continued to move in and out at regular intervals, but Sayaka and Shinji were too far from the water to possibly be swept away. "If you have even one person willing to play the game...look what happens. Should we collect their weapons?"  
  
"If we don't, who knows who will." Toru was already placing Shinji's blowdarts into his day pack and Kanako took Sayaka's sword down to the water to wash it clean of blood.   
  
18 students remaining  
  
19  
  
Suzuko was climbing the northern mountain all by her lonesome. Her cut wasn't bleeding anymore, as she applied pressure to the cut and then tore off a small section of her skirt to tie around it. Sure, it looked strange, but it would have to do. She saw the viewing platform up ahead and climbed faster, then stepped inside. Miki was still curled up in the corner.  
  
"Miki?"   
  
"Oh, Suzuko, you're the first to arrive. Do you know where Asuka, Nanako or Fujiko are?"  
  
"Sorry, I don't. Is that everyone else who's coming?"  
  
"Yeah, and Tomoko would've come if she was still alive. You got hurt?"  
  
"Tetsuko slashed me when I walked by her. But I'm still here and she's not, so who's laughing last?"   
  
"Is that your weapon?" Miki pointed to Suzuko's ball and chain.   
  
"Yep, I finally can wield it properly. I ran into Hirai and Wakabayashi and lopped off some of Hirai's big wooden pole with this thing, so it's gotta be good, right?" Suzuko swung the ball and chain in the air while Miki ducked. "Oh, don't worry, I won't hit you. I know how to wield it, remember?"   
  
"Right..."  
  
"So, when the others get here what'll we do?" Suzuko asked, looking through a pair of binoculars. She pointed them down the mountain and noticed Nanako, Asuka and Fujiko were coming up the mountain. They were, obviously, drenched in rain but weren't injured very badly if at all.   
  
"Compare weapons, then sit around and talk. If someone wants to challenge us we'll all fight them. There's no way one person can win against five, don't you agree?"  
  
"I agree. We can be the hiding group, we'll survive a lot longer if we stay in a group where everyone will want to be alive." Little did Miki know that one girl in the group had very different ideas about the group's survival.   
  
18 students remaining 


	3. Part Three

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Three  
  
20  
  
Shizuka was now sitting on the bed in the master bedroom, still wrapped up in two blankets except she was beginning to shiver slightly. It was nearing noontime.   
  
"So you're absolutely sure you're all right?" Junko suggested.  
  
"If I was all right, would I be sitting here wrapped in blankets and shivering?"  
  
"Hm...you have a good point there. Your concealer washed off, by the way."  
  
"No it didn't!" Shizuka exclaimed in disbelief. "Goddammit!" She reached up for her face and felt the same scar that Kiyoharu was staring at. "And of course I didn't even think of bringing the tube along with me!"  
  
"Wait a minute. Didn't we have suitcases for a normal study trip on the bus?"   
  
"Yeah, we did. Why?"  
  
"Where are they? We don't have them with us."  
  
"Toyama's probably got them over at the school. Why did they have to make the school a forbidden zone? That really pisses me off." Shizuka looked over towards a mirror hanging on the wall. There were pictures of a woman and a small child taped to the mirror, but she was more concerned with how a person could easily see the biggest scar on Shizuka's face, as well as a few smaller ones on her chin.   
  
"Hey, I wonder if the woman who lives here has some coats hanging around," Junko wondered aloud, heading for the closet and opening it up to find it completely empty. "Not even a sweater..."   
  
"But this comforter sure is warm," Shizuka commented, having nestled down underneath the covers on the bed. "Not warm enough, but good."   
  
"Do you want me to get some tea or soup for you?"  
  
"If it's warm, yes."   
  
"All right. I'll have Kiyoharu send up some."  
  
"Thanks." Shizuka rolled over in the bed and stared out of the window at the rain. 'Why am I so cold? I'm not usually this way. Do I have hypothermia or something? I haven't ruled out that possibility yet...Kiyoharu's coming up here to see me. Should I tell him? I want to tell him. I want him to hold me and tell me it'll all be all right someday, even though all the scars and burns on my body seem to tell me otherwise. But even though I'm in the Program and I'll probably die, at least I'll never have to go back home to my stepdad.' She closed her eyes and began to remember.  
  
Her parents divorced early, when she was just starting kindergarten. For a while, her mom decided to just be a single mom and everything was good. Then when Shizuka was in 4th grade, her mom met her stepdad and began dating him. While Shizuka wasn't so sure about this mysterious man, she was happy as long as he wasn't in the house. She was watching a robot anime show one day when her mother walked up behind her and sat down on the couch.  
  
"Shizuka..." she began in her 'we need to talk' voice. "You know how I've been seeing Masahiko a lot lately?"  
  
"Mmm-hmm." Shizuka desperately wanted her mom to talk about something else. Anything other than Masahiko Arimachi would do.   
  
"Well, honey, he's going to move into the house with us."   
  
"WHAT?!" The ten-year-old Shizuka whirled around from the robot anime, then stood up and balled her hands into fists. She could feel the anger burning through her. "He'll ruin the house!"  
  
"But, honey, I really do love him..."  
  
"And you love me too, right? Right? Just remember how much you'll be hurting me." She stomped off angrily towards her room.   
  
A few days later, Masahiko came with all of his suitcases and moved in. Shizuka only talked to him if she absolutely had to, and even then she wasn't willing to say too much. She suspected Masahiko was no good and she was right. Masahiko started to beat her if she did anything wrong. Shizuka sometimes had to stay after school for help with math and if she came home one minute past 5:00, Masahiko would be waiting there with his belt or a small knife ready. He made Shizuka swear to secrecy about "this", as he called it, because if she told anyone he would kill her. Terrified, Shizuka submitted to all the beatings. Soon, there were too many scars and cigarette burns on her legs, which were exposed by the skirts that she wore as part of her uniform. Her mother took notice of this and Shizuka lied about who was giving her these scars, citing a school bully as the abuser. Her mother told the school counselor about this and Shizuka began to wear the boys' uniform instead of the girls' to cover all her scars and burns. The kids at school began to shy away from her and she became introverted, relying on herself or Junko Mizuboshi as friends. To this day, Shizuka still hasn't told her mother who really gave her those scars and she's still terrified that she really will be killed if she does. (By the way, her mom married her stepdad when she was 12 but Shizuka didn't change her surname from Arai to Arimachi.)  
  
"Shizuka?" she heard a voice ask. She opened her eyes to see Kiyoharu sitting on the other side of the king-sized bed, holding a hot cup of tea.   
  
"Oh...hi, Kiyoharu," Shizuka said as she woke up, yawning a little. 'He's right here...Oh God...what to do now?'  
  
"You're not looking so good," Kiyoharu said, concerned. "Are you all right?"  
  
"Not really, but at least I don't have any bullets in me or anything. I'll be fine." Shizuka began to sip the hot tea. "Thanks for the tea."  
  
"All right. If you get worse, please tell me and I'll take you to the clinic."  
  
"Thank you," Shizuka said as she sipped more of the tea. Kiyoharu nodded and left the room, shutting the door.   
  
"DAMMIT!!" she screamed aloud, kicking the sheets. "I couldn't tell him!" She looked in the mirror. "What a disgrace..."  
  
18 students remaining  
  
21  
  
"Check it out, I'm in the computer's files," Kaoru bragged to Kazuhiko. Kaoru found a laptop computer in the house they were in and the laptop's battery was at 100%, so the two were trying to hack into the computer over at the school and find a way to disable the collars.   
  
"Sweet!" Kazuhiko replied, looking at the screen. All the file names were in English, which he didn't understand very well, but apparently Kaoru was very good at it. "What is it?"  
  
"Well, there's a data log of the exact times when everyone who has died so far died, some info about the island, and...this file. I might've gotten it." Kaoru pointed to the screen, where there was a file called guadalcanal22kitagawa3a2003.doc loading up. It popped up and there was a strange list. Each line of code had M1, F1, M2, F2, et cetera, with a 10-digit string of numbers next to each one. "Using inference I figured out that M1 must stand for Male Student 1, who is, of course, Masao Suzuki. F1 is Shizuka Arai. M2 is Kazuo Hanagata, et cetera, et cetera. Notice how Kazuo's 10-digit number is written in red? That means that he's dead. See? Tomoko's is also written in red."  
  
"But what significance do these numbers play?"  
  
"I'm not quite sure about that. They might be the serial numbers for the collars everyone is wearing. I have no idea what a "Guadalcanal 22" is, though, so I can't be sure. It could even be a tracking number that the computer uses to show where we are."  
  
"Tracking is connected to the collars, though, so it all points back to the collars. Do you see any clear place to put in these numbers?"  
  
"Not yet. Hold on." A small window popped up at the bottom of the screen that alerted Kaoru to the fact that the laptop battery was quickly deteriorating. "Oh man, the laptop battery's going down quick." Another small window popped up that read, "Connection terminating..." and began a countdown from 10. "Connection terminating?! Dammit!!" Kaoru tried to save the guadalcanal22 file but an error message popped up saying that the file was read-only and could not be saved or modified in any way. Finally the countdown ended and the connection to the school computer was terminated. Kaoru gave up and shut down the laptop.  
  
"What was that?" Kazuhiko asked, alarmed.  
  
"I don't know. Somehow they found out about my connection or something, because it seemed to be going just fine until now."   
  
"But how? Didn't you say you had it so that they couldn't trace your login info?"  
  
"I did have it so they couldn't trace my login. It was perfect. I didn't leave any trace or footstep or anything. I don't understand this."   
  
"Hey, try again, see if you can get something to disable the guard ships or something," Kazuhiko suggested. Kaoru rebooted the laptop (battery level 70%) and tried to reconnect. It failed and he tried again. Another failure. He tried ten more times, the battery level decreasing every so often. Every time he tried, the connection would look like it was going to go through, then it would fail.   
  
"So...it won't work?" Kazuhiko asked sadly.  
  
"Unfortunately...no." Kaoru sighed.  
  
"So...we're screwed?"  
  
"Most likely yes."   
  
18 students remaining  
  
22  
  
Daisuke grew bored of hiding in the farmhouse, plus Sho's corpse was beginning to smell terrible. (And were those worms crawling into his head? Gross.) He sat up from his new hay couch and exited the farmhouse, holding his shotgun just in case. He looked around and didn't see anyone coming, so he began to walk east. Everything was east of the farmhouse on the map, so he'd definitely find something worth his while. As he neared a large grove of tangerine trees, he heard someone else's footsteps crunching the leaves. (It wasn't him because he was standing on a stick, not leaves.) He clicked the safety off on his shotgun to try to warn the other person that he was armed, but the other person didn't seem to care.   
  
"Who's there?" the other person asked.  
  
"Daisuke, who are you?"  
  
"It's Takashi."   
  
"Look, I don't want to kill you, okay? This is just a precaution, this unlocking the safety thing."  
  
"Are you alone?"  
  
"Yeah, I'm alone."  
  
"Well, there's safety in numbers so do you want to come along with me? I think I have some leads as to where people are, we could take out some unsuspecting people."   
  
"I like the idea, Takashi. Let's go." Daisuke was walking over to Takashi when that crackling noise happened again.  
  
18 students remaining  
  
23  
  
"Hey again, everyone, it's noon and you know what that means! Time for your announcements!"  
  
"It's announcement time again?" Shizuka and Junko were hanging out in the bedroom, eating and talking about the good times. "It's noon?" Shizuka was confused.   
  
"Yeah, it doesn't look like it because of how dark it is outside, but my watch says it's noon."   
  
"All right, first I'm going to announce the forbidden zones. At 1:00, A-8; at 3:00, H-2; and at 5:00, G-5. Everyone got that? Okay, now for the deaths. First, the males: No. 4 Shinji Asaba and No. 7 Sho Satsuki. Now, the females: just No. 7 Sayaka Ichiki. You guys are doing great, keep up the good work."   
  
"What an asshole! Trying to tell us we're doing a good job when our classmates are dying!" Junko said, annoyed.  
  
"Shinji and Sayaka died," Shizuka said quietly. "I wonder if they died together."   
  
"Probably so," Junko replied. She tutted. "It's so sad, isn't it?"   
  
"It is." There was an uncomfortable silence.   
  
"Hey, Shizuka?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"When are you going to tell Kiyoharu?"  
  
"I'm not sure. I might this afternoon. I mean, before I die I want to have at least been kissed once, you know? I'm not asking for much." Shizuka looked away, out towards the window. Junko knew well that the question was bugging Shizuka.   
  
"I'm sorry, did that question make you mad or anything?"  
  
"Not really, I'm just planning how to tell him. I've known him for almost as long as I've known you, you know? We've grown really close. I...I love him."   
  
"Oh man. I'm going to go get him right now."  
  
"Right now?" The tiniest bit of a blush played across Shizuka's cheeks. She was getting colder...  
  
"Right now. Trust me, you won't regret it. Be right back!" Junko left the room and Shizuka could hear her running down the hall to the kitchen, then asking Kiyoharu to go over to the master bedroom. Shizuka got a bit nervous as she heard footsteps coming down the hall towards her, then sighed and decided to bite the bullet. Kiyoharu opened the door.  
  
"Junko told me to come here," he explained.  
  
"I know. I told her to tell you."  
  
"What's wrong, Shizuka, are you getting colder?"  
  
"I am, actually, but that's not the point." Shizuka gulped. Kiyoharu was staring directly at her. 'His eyes are so beautiful...but they look sad. What's going on?' "Um, this is really hard for me to say so I'm just going to let whatever thoughts I'm thinking tumble out of my brain." She hesitated. Her heart was beating in her throat. That was kind of a weird feeling..."I'm probably going to die in this game, so before I depart this world I wanted to tell you that, well, I love you."   
  
"Shizuka...I...I had no idea...Are you lying?"  
  
"Would I lie about the biggest secret I have?" Shizuka smiled.   
  
"Shizuka, your lips are turning blue."  
  
"I'm shivering like no other, too, but I'll deal. I'm not dead yet, right?"   
  
"So...you really do love me?"  
  
"Yes, Kiyoharu. I do. Come over here." Shizuka reached out for Kiyoharu but couldn't reach him until he walked over closer to her. "That's better." Shizuka sat up and hugged Kiyoharu. "You're so warm."   
  
"That's because I don't have hypothermia." Kiyoharu paused, then brought Shizuka's pale face up to his own and tenderly kissed those blue lips. Shizuka didn't want him to stop. For once in her life someone actually loved her and she wished this moment would never stop, but it did.   
  
"That...was amazing," Shizuka said breathily. "Thanks a lot, I appreciate that."  
  
"It's not a problem," Kiyoharu replied, smiling at Shizuka. "Do you need to get some sleep?"  
  
"No, I'm fine. You guys having fun down there?"  
  
"We're discussing politics, want to join?"  
  
"Of course! I'll be right there!"  
  
18 students remaining  
  
24  
  
"We're cool," Fujiko bragged. She, Nanako, Asuka, Miki and Suzuko were all at the northern mountain's viewing platform, all trying to get out of the rain. It was just past 2:00pm.   
  
"I agree," Asuka replied.  
  
"Isn't it sad how Shinji and Sayaka are dead?" Suzuko asked. Everyone grew quiet for a few moments in respect for the dead, then nodded silently.   
  
"They were so...good together, you know?" Miki commented.   
  
"Do you think they died together?" Nanako suggested. "Like a double suicide?"   
  
"I think so. I think neither of them wanted to play the game or go on without the other," Fujiko said sadly, looking down at a hole in the ground. Everyone was friends with Shinji and Sayaka, they were neutral when it came to cliques or labels. And now they were both dead?!  
  
"I suppose we have to get used to it. There's still a lot of our class left," Miki pointed out. "18 out of 30 is still a lot, right?"  
  
"Miki, that's almost half of our class," Suzuko said in her most deadpan voice. Miki became quiet very quickly, obviously embarassed.   
  
"So, who do we need to stay away from?" Asuka asked after what seemed like an eternity of silence. "In other words, who's playing the game?"  
  
"It should be obvious that Umeboshi and Yanagi are our worst enemies," Nanako replied. "I'm not so sure about Niimura."  
  
"Which one? Kanako or Toru?" Fujiko asked.  
  
"Toru. He was part of Umeboshi's gang, right?"   
  
"So is Kirishima, he's still alive too."   
  
"Hold on, I'm writing this down." Asuka did have her class list out and was writing a list of people to stay away from on it. "So, we've got Shojiro, Sakura, Toru, Daisuke..."  
  
"I don't trust Arai," Fujiko suddenly said out of nowhere. "She has lots of scars, she might've been in a lot of fights and therefore wouldn't give two craps about killing any of us."  
  
"So it's Shojiro, Sakura, Toru, Daisuke, Shizuka, anyone else?"  
  
"No, I think we're good to go. All the other bad guys are dead," Suzuko grinned. "Now let's give thanks to Shojiro for killing off a bunch of our threats."   
  
"Thanks, Shojiro!" the five girls said in unison.  
  
18 students remaining  
  
25  
  
"Did you hear something?" Shojiro asked Sakura. "I swear I heard my name."  
  
"You're just hallucinating again. I'm so hungry...What I would give for something other than this rock-hard bread!" Sakura groaned, putting a hand on her growling stomach.   
  
"You know, there is a general store on this map, we could go there and see if they have some food."  
  
"That's a good idea, Shojiro, why didn't you tell me earlier?"  
  
"I didn't think of it until now."  
  
"Good enough excuse for me. Come on, let's go. Where is it?"  
  
"It's by the houses. You know, a lot of people are probably hidden in those houses."  
  
"Are you pondering what I'm pondering?" A devious grin played on Sakura's face.   
  
"If you're thinking of going down to the houses and killing everyone who's there, then yes." Shojiro looked down at his machine gun.   
  
"So, we're going to go to the store first to see if there's some food there, then go right down to the houses and clean them out?" Shojiro nodded. "Ooh! That sounds like fun!" Sakura took out her map and drew a path to the general store with her finger. "So we just go that way, and then go there?" Shojiro looked over at her map.  
  
"Yeah, you got it. It won't take too terribly long." The two began to walk in silence towards the general store. Every so often, Sakura would try to start a conversation but would then eat her words, realizing just how dumb she was being, trying to have a chat in a strange situation like this one. Suddenly she remembered the Program preparational video that classes 3-A, 3-B, 3-C and 3-D were required to watch at the beginning of the year. The one thing that was reiterated about one thousand times in that stupid video was, 'Don't trust anyone.' The video tried to make it perfectly clear that you couldn't trust anyone in this game and now Sakura was having regrets. How did she know Shojiro wouldn't fool her? That he wouldn't try to kill her? Suddenly, she was very glad for the small test tube with a capsule in it that was included in her day pack as well as her weapon.   
  
The rain never let up on their trip to the general store. Shojiro told Sakura to stand beside the store and keep herself armed while he checked to see if anyone was inside.   
  
"Well, someone came before us," he reported.  
  
"How do you know?" Sakura asked.  
  
"The little window above the door is broken, nice and clean so you don't cut yourself on the glass too." He reached inside and unlocked the lock, then opened the door. "Simple as that, huh? Come on in, Sakura." She nodded and sidestepped to the door, still keeping her gun at the ready just in case. Shojiro was already pawing around the shelves, looking for anything.  
  
"The person before us cleaned out a lot of stuff, but I think I can find something."  
  
"Do you want me to help?"  
  
"No, you keep an eye out for anything that's not normal." Sakura nodded and kept her eyes peeled on the surrounding area. She heard leaves rustle, assumed the worst, got ready and aimed...at a rat. But boy, did she hate rats. Their little beady eyes, their tiny teeth as sharp as needles, but Sakura especially hated all those diseases that rats carried. Which got her to thinking, could she sleep without being attacked by rats? She shuddered at the thought when there was more rustling. Once again she readied her weapon and saw Kaoru emerging with his provided weapon, a baseball bat. She cocked her gun.  
  
"Whoa, hey, I'm not trying to hurt you, I just need to get something from the general store..." Kaoru began to explain.  
  
"Shojiro is in there right now," Sakura answered coldly.  
  
"And that means I can't go in there too?"  
  
"As far as I'm concerned, no, he told me to not let anyone else come in." Sakura paused to let Kaoru think. Instead of shrugging and walking away, Kaoru raised his bat and hit the wrist that was holding the gun. Sakura shrieked and the gun fell to the ground, firing at a wall. She looked over at the floor, then at Kaoru, then dove for the gun, but Kaoru stopped her by placing his bat on the ground and then lifting it up with a lot of force. Sakura was thrown into the air and landed against the wall, letting out an oomph as the wind was stolen from her mouth. Shojiro turned from raiding a shelf and saw Kaoru rushing over to Sakura, presumably to beat her more with that baseball bat. Immediately he began to fire, the rat-tat-tat sound of the machine gun ringing out in the store. Shojiro emptied ten bullets into Kaoru before he finally fell over, dead right away. His baseball bat rolled to the other side of the floor and Sakura sat, still up against the wall, still panting for air, Kaoru's corpse right in front of her. A large puddle of blood was beginning to spurt from his wounds and Sakura was getting a bit uncomfortable. She reached for her gun, stood up and leapt over the puddle to dry ground.  
  
"Are you all right?" Shojiro asked.   
  
"Yeah...He didn't hurt me too badly, I just got the wind knocked out of me and my wrist is throbbing a bit." Sakura took a deep breath and grabbed her injured wrist with her good one. "So...are you done yet?"  
  
"Yes, I'm done, do you want to go set up a base now? I think I should take a look at your wrist. Maybe put some ice on it or something." Shojiro examined Sakura's hurt wrist.   
  
"Okay, fine." Sakura bent down and got Kaoru's baseball bat, then the two left the general store, leaving him lying there. A minute later, a rat skittered inside and sniffed the new corpse.  
  
17 students remaining 


	4. Part Four

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Four  
  
26  
  
Daisuke and Takashi were hiding out by the southern mountain, just passing the time and trying not to get seen by anyone, no matter if they felt like playing the game or not. It was just about to be 3:00 pm. Takashi was carving into the ground using his big wooden pole while Daisuke looked on, staring at his shotgun.   
  
"I feel like shooting something," he suddenly exclaimed, standing up and grabbing his gun. Takashi poked him in the stomach with the pole.  
  
"Are you crazy? If you shoot, people might be able to know where we are. People who are playing the game might be able to know where we are." Takashi jabbed Daisuke again until he sat back down. "We're just going to sit here quietly and hope nobody comes by."  
  
"You know, if nobody's killed for so much time, all the collars detonate anyway," Daisuke pointed out.  
  
"No they don't, that's just an urban legend." Takashi tried to shrug it off.  
  
"Really? Explain, then, why the 1992 Program in Hokkaido ended due to 'time expiring'? Time expiring. Nobody was killed for so much time, I think 12 hours, so everyone died anyway. What if everyone else is hiding out just like we are and nobody is dying? We'll all die anyway, right?" Daisuke looked over at Takashi, who was at a loss for words.   
  
"You're right," he said after an uncomfortable silence. "So, if you want to shoot something, go ahead." Daisuke nodded, then stood up and aimed his shotgun at a tree. Quickly he cocked it back and then fired...  
  
...right as it turned to 3:00 pm.   
  
Both Daisuke Kirishima and Takashi Hirai felt a strange sensation, as if someone was choking them with strangely hot hands. Then they could feel no more, as their collars detonated and their heads exploded.  
  
Daisuke and Takashi were in square H-2, which had just become forbidden.  
  
15 students remaining  
  
27  
  
The phone rang inside Okishima School. Toyama picked it up.  
  
"Hello? Oh, Mr. Shaku. How are you doing? I know, there's only fifteen left. Can you believe it? It's not even 5:00 yet! These kids work fast, don't they? Someone wants to win. Who are you betting on? I've got my money on Umeboshi. He's got a lot going for him. You think Yanagi? She's pretty headstrong, I think she'll do just fine. The kids are doing great. The first one is in fifth grade. He's just elated that his father got to host the Program like you wouldn't believe. Lots of pride. The second's in third grade. She's also very proud of me, you know? The third one's on its way. They're saying January. Only two months. Isn't that unbelievable? You guys have a pool going on the students? Who all have you chosen? Well, of course pretty much everyone's selected Umeboshi or Yanagi. What? Someone selected Arai? Shizuka Arai? She won't survive. She's messed up, you know? Messed up bad, if you pull up her permanent records and her counseling records. She had to stop wearing a girls' uniform in fourth grade because her legs are covered in scars. If you take a look-see at her counseling records you'll see that her stepdad inflicted all her wounds. Mmm-hmm. Suicidal, too. You should tell that guy to bet on Umeboshi. Trust me. Well, thank you, sir. Good day." Toyama hung up the phone.  
  
"Sir, Kirishima and Hirai were caught in square H-2," someone reported to Toyama.  
  
"Hm, the first 2 to be caught in a forbidden zone. They're doing good so far about staying out of forbidden zones, huh?" Mr. Toyama lit a cigar and puffed it. "How many are left?"  
  
"Fifteen, sir. Out of thirty."  
  
"I know that, I can do my math, you know! I'm excited to see how this turns out." He grinned a strangely evil grin from behind that smelly cigar.  
  
15 students remaining  
  
28  
  
Toru and Kanako were hiding in an abandoned farmhouse, stuck inside bales of hay. The rain still pounded steadily outside.  
  
"It's not going to stop raining, is it?" Kanako asked, glum. Sayaka's sword was now attached to her skirt and she had an idea how to use it from seeing movies and terebi dramas.   
  
"I'm afraid not," Toru replied, also glum. He had no idea what kind of situation Shinji's blowdarts would come in handy in, but then again he did still have Tomoko, Shuko and Naomi's weapons at his disposal. "Do you want to do more weapons practice?" He pointed to a bale of hay that looked damaged. Large, thin gashes were all over it and stray hay was all over the wooden floor.  
  
"Do I?" Kanako replied, her glum face becoming a small bit happier. She hopped up out of her pile of hay, holding her sword. "Can I use one of the girls' weapons?"  
  
"Sure, which one?"   
  
"I want the whip." Toru reluctantly handed his sister Tomoko's whip, still wrapped up because it hadn't been used by its former owner. Kanako dropped the whip at her feet and unsheathed her sword like she'd seen in a movie, then held it out in front of her, aligning the very tip of the blade with the center of the hay bale. She stood silently for a moment, then slashed the bale of hay from the right side with the sword, moving it so fast you could hardly see the blade moving, The blade emerged from the other end of the hay a few seconds later. Kanako simply held it where it exited the hay, then watched as the entire top half of the bale fell to the ground, all in one clean sweep. Toru applauded as he reset the bale of hay by putting the top half back where it belonged, then patting it down. Kanako put the sword back in its sheath, then attached it to her skirt once more. She knelt down and picked up the whip, then unwrapped it and held it at the ready so the actual whip part was trailing on the floor. She stood back so as to allow room for it to lash, then raised her arm up and quickly brought it back down. The whip tore through the hay, then hit the floor, making a loud cracking noise. Kanako pulled on the whip and wasn't one bit surprised when one half of the hay surrendered and fell to the ground. Kanako continued this pattern of sword then whip for a little while until her wrists were throbbing in pain and she was forced to stop. Then she heard a noise and reflexively cracked the whip against the door, which was open and was letting the rain in.   
  
She hit Toshiya in the stomach and he fell to his knees.   
  
"Oh man!! I'm sorry!" she pleaded with Toshiya as he tried to catch his breath. Toshiya looked completely trustable and Kanako brought the whip back to her feet when he suddenly took out his diver's knife and slashed up, creating a huge gash on her left shin. Immediately Kanako brought out her sword and held it to Toshiya's throat, right above his collar. "You're trying to trick me, aren't you? You want to play the game!" She was about to go for the slash when there was a "tuk!" sound and Kanako noted there was a small dart protruding from Toshiya's neck. She looked over and saw a thin bamboo pole in Toru's mouth and another blowdart in his hand.   
  
"Maybe these things WERE going to come in handy sometime?" Toru asked, extracting the bamboo pole from his mouth. Toshiya was still alive and trying to get the dart out of his throat.   
  
"I think you need to shoot another one," Kanako said, stepping away so she wouldn't clog up Toru's aim. Toru nodded and shot another blowdart, which hit Toshiya right above the first one.  
  
"Sorry," Toru said after removing the bamboo pole once more. "But anyone who fucks with my sister fucks with me." A strange gurgling sound came from Toshiya as he coughed up blood and tottered around before falling forward. Kanako bent down and listened for a pulse, then for breath, and upon hearing neither she declared him dead.  
  
14 students remaining  
  
29  
  
It was nearing 6:00 pm and Kazuhiko was alone. Kaoru went out to the general store a few hours ago and hadn't returned yet. Either everyone else was also there and they made a nice line to wait for whatever was left there or...he was killed. Remembering that this was, indeed, the Program, it was probably the latter. Would the laptop still work? He decided to find out by turning it on and watching as it switched itself off due to not having adequate battery power.   
  
'Well, Kazuhiko, here you are, alone again, like always. Whatcha gonna do?' He shook some of his hair out of his face and looked over his gun, the same one used by the government. The government that allowed children to kill each other in the most unusual ways possible. The government. And now he hated the government more than ever. Great. He looked out of the window, where it was still raining steadily. What else was new, right? So, who was dead? Shinji, Shinya, Kazuo, Minami, Tomoko, Naomi, Shuko, Akito, Junji, Sho, Sayaka and probably Kaoru. Only seventeen kids left? This was crazy. Get me out of here. Now.  
  
He picked up his gun and stared at it, almost as if he was holding a staring contest. It was small, shining black and had the model number listed on the handle. This was the first tme he'd ever handled a gun in his life and if it weren't for the Program, he probably would still be naive. He stared into the barrel of the gun like he had seen in movies before, but never dreamt he'd be like those guys in the movies.  
  
Outside, Shojiro and Sakura were walking down the road, which was the only paved road on Okishima. Every so often they'd step in a puddle and get splashed, but that was only a slight hindrance. What they were really looking for were signs of people. People to kill, of course. They'd already taken out almost everyone else. Well, okay, Daisuke and Toru were still missing in action, but eventually they would have to meet up, right? Okishima was a small island. And suddenly Sakura longed to go back to city life in Kobe as it was before. Arcade nights with Tetsuko and some other girls who were in different classes. Ramen shops at 12 midnight when the nice old chefs would make anything you wanted. Even getting in fistfights in alleys would be so much better than this.   
  
"You don't want to be here, do you?" Shojiro asked. He had a deep voice for a 15-year-old...Sakura liked that.  
  
"No. Anywhere but here would be fine."  
  
"That's understandable." He looked away from her but she knew he was also a bit homesick. And why not? He came from a privileged family. He had a reason to be homesick for a place where there was a nice heater, nice hot food and a nice bed. Sakura lived in a fleabag roachtrap apartment complex with her mother, on the other hand. Sometimes the heater wouldn't even work, which is why they were still trying to get a space heater. He was lucky. Maybe she could steal something from his house. You know, pawn a pair of his mother's earrings or something?  
  
"I think I saw something," he reported a short while later, walking by the house Kazuhiko was alone in. Sakura unzipped her day pack and took out Kaoru's baseball bat as well as her gun. "Good, you're getting quicker at that."  
  
"Thanks. So, we're going in?"  
  
"Yeah. If the door's locked, I want you to bash the shit out of any keyholes or locks you see. You might be able to open them by force. If not, give me a nod and I'll shoot." The two arrived at the front door. Sakura tapped it with her foot and it didn't open. Immediately she began to bash the lock above the doorknob with her baseball bat, which seemed to work, as the lock popped open and dangled by only one screw. She tapped the door again and it swung open. The two stepped inside. Kazuhiko jumped up from the living room desk, where the laptop was, and saw Sakura and Shojiro coming down the hall at him. He held out his gun and, without even thinking about aim, fired. One bullet whizzed past Sakura's hair and the other hit her in the hand. She let out a bloodcurdling scream of pain as she looked down and saw her hand rapidly turning red and the butt of a small golden bullet sticking out of her wound. With a gasping scream, she managed to remove the bullet from her hand and simply grasped the baseball bat with a bloodied hand.  
  
"Bastard, you messed up my beautiful hand," she said to Kazuhiko. "Oh, but I do feel pity for you. You're about to die, aren't you still a virgin?"  
  
'Doesn't this seem like the wrong time to be asking that?' Kazuhiko asked himself, raising an eyebrow. "Is that any of your business?"  
  
"That means yes," Shojiro commented, snickering.   
  
"Don't be ashamed." Sakura took a step forward, then grabbed at the end of her skirt with her unharmed hand, beginning to lift it up slowly like she had done so many times before. "Come on, you know you want to." She kept stepping closer and closer to Kazuhiko, lifting up her skirt more and more. She saw Kazuhiko's eyes getting bigger and bigger. Yeah, he wanted it. What else was new? "It can be just quick and easy, you know, so you don't have to die without ever having this experience." Then she sealed the deal with a whore's kiss. There was no feeling behind it on her part, but it was quite obvious Kazuhiko was enjoying it. 'Analysis: He's sucking too damn hard. I feel like I'm going to come out of this without any lips. Damn...' Finally she got sick of it and jabbed her gun into his stomach. She pulled herself away and then pulled the trigger.  
  
"And that was the last sensation you'll ever feel," she commented as Kazuhiko died.   
  
13 students remaining  
  
30  
  
Once again, the crackling noise came over mysterious speakers nobody could see.  
  
"Hi everyone, it's Mr. Toyama again. We've got a lot of things to announce, so be quiet and you can hear. First off, the forbidden zones. At 7pm, F-1. At 9pm, H-8 and at 11pm, B-9. All right, now here are the deaths. First, the males: No. 10 Kaoru Sengakuji, No. 6 Daisuke Kirishima, No. 3 Takashi Hirai, No. 14 Toshiya Wakabayashi and No. 15 Kazuhiko Yamatani. Actually, no other females have died yet. Girls must be better at hiding. Well, this is the last for a while until midnight. Oh, by the way, Takashi and Daisuke were caught in a forbidden zone. You should all be careful to not step in a forbidden zone. Good luck!"  
  
"There are only four guys left," Shizuka observed. She, Masao, Junko and Kiyoharu were still in the same house, taking notes on the news.  
  
"Dammit," Junko hissed. "We're in H-8. We're going to have to move by 9:00." She looked over at Shizuka, whose lips were now completely blue and her skin was sallow and pale. She was a wreck. Kiyoharu, out of the goodness of his heart, ransacked about 5 other houses and returned with old suitcases full of blankets. Sure, some smelled of moth balls and others had holes in them, but they would have to do. Now Shizuka was wrapped in six different blankets.   
  
"Well, we could move to the clinic, that hasn't been banned yet," Masao replied.   
  
"We should probably do that. Shizuka's getting worse." Kiyoharu looked over at Shizuka, who managed a weary smile.   
  
"Who was the sadist who had the great idea of holding a Program in the middle of November?" Masao asked, looking out the window. "Fool."  
  
"I know, most Programs are held in April or May, sometimes even in the summer," Junko added.   
  
"Nothing makes sense anymore," Shizuka finished. Kiyoharu rose from his chair and went over to the couch Shizuka was reclining on, then gently placed her head in his lap so she was staring up at him. "Damn. I won't even live to turn 15."  
  
"Now whoever said we had to die?" Kiyoharu asked Shizuka, running his hand through strands of her red hair.  
  
"I'm just thinking morbidly."  
  
Sakura and Shojiro were finished with Kazuhiko (obviously), so they decided to go look for more people. They would open up every house in the quietest way possible, which involved a complex system involving bobby pins, credit cards and looking under potted plants for extra keys. They would go inside and search every room, then leave because nobody else seemed to be hiding in the residential area. Finally they came upon the house Junko, Masao, Shizuka and Kiyoharu were hiding in. They simply crawled in through the already opened window, but if you sat in the living room you could very clearly see the dining room, which is where that broken window was. Suddenly Kiyoharu rose to his feet.  
  
"What's wrong?" Shizuka asked.   
  
"Stay," he commanded, placing a hand on her shoulder. She nodded and quickly obliged. "Masao, come with me. Junko, you stay, too." The two boys made sure they had their weapons ready and headed into the dining room only to come face-to-face with the barrels of two guns. Kiyoharu turned to Shizuka.  
  
"Go, get away from here, you two take the day pack with all the food, we'll be there, don't worry about us," he hastily commanded. Shizuka was clearly panicking no matter how much she was trying to hide it. Junko helped her gather the day pack and the two girls fled the house, Shizuka still wrapped in five different blankets. She turned in the doorway and cast a glance at Kiyoharu before taking out her pistol, aiming and firing. The bullet soared through the air and hit Shojiro's right thigh. He stumbled for a moment but then got back up and was ready to shoot at Shizuka when he realized that she was out of his line of sight. He instead turned his sights on Masao, armed with his axe, and Kiyoharu, armed with his pistol.  
  
"Hehehe," Shojiro laughed. "You're fucked." Quickly thinking, Masao slashed Shojiro's right arm, the one holding his machine gun. This caused him to drop the gun and Masao hurriedly kicked it away, then blocked the path to it with his axe. Kiyoharu was preoccupied blocking Sakura from going to get the gun. Eventually he tired of Sakura waving around that damn baseball bat like she knew how to use it, so he simply blew a hole in it with his gun. It turns out the bat was wooden, not aluminum, so the wood was extremely weakened above the bullet hole. Sakura swung the bat once more, which Kiyoharu dodged, then they watched as the top of the bat slid off, leaving a splintered, sharp edge. Kiyoharu realized this and was about to shoot another hole in the same bat when Sakura let out a hiss and dropped her gun, which was in her wounded hand.   
  
"Sakura, are you okay?"  
  
"No, Shojiro, I'm not..." She hissed again. Shojiro looked over Masao and Kiyoharu. Neither of them were hurt at all, they looked just fine. He scowled at them.   
  
"Listen up, Suzuki, Moritaka. If you give me back my gun I won't attack you. Sakura needs some first aid or something for her hand."  
  
"I don't trust him," Masao replied almost immediately. "Don't do it, Kiyoharu."  
  
"Can you see anything?" Shizuka whispered. She and Junko were huddled in a bush underneath the other, not broken dining room window.   
  
"Yeah, Sakura's really hurt and now Shojiro's saying...um...something. Hold on. He's trying to make a deal with them. He keeps gesturing to his gun."  
  
"He's going to shoot them!" Shizuka screamed, grabbing her gun and dashing back inside.  
  
"No! Shizuka! Come back! You might get hurt!" Junko screamed after Shizuka, who had already kicked open the front door and was diving into the dining room. She saw Kiyoharu, then drew her gun and rushed over to him. She put her arm around his shoulder and screamed to create a distraction, then the two dove to the ground as she shot wildly into the air, hoping a bullet would ricochet off something and hopefully hit Shojiro or Sakura. The two landed on the ground with a "flump" noise, much of the force of the fall absorbed by all of Shizuka's blankets. Shizuka was panting. She couldn't take running a lot in her delicate health condition. What did she have, anyway? Had she ever been that cold before in her life?   
  
"Shizuka..." Kiyoharu began, looking up at her. "Why?"  
  
"Why did I do this? Because...because I really care about you, Kiyoharu," Shizuka answered. Shojiro and Sakura gave up due to Sakura's hand and turned to leave, but not before Sakura scratched Shizuka in her leg with the broken-off baseball bat. Shizuka let out a high-pitched cry of pain and whimpered in Kiyoharu's arms as the two left. Masao looked outside, then looked back at Kiyoharu and Shizuka, who were hugging each other on the ground, still in the same position that they fell in.   
  
"Are you two okay?" Masao asked. Shizuka nodded slightly, still breathing heavily. Kiyoharu gently touched the injured leg and his hand came back bloodied.   
  
"We need to get her to the clinic right away," he informed Masao. "Go get Junko, tell her we're going to the clinic. Can you walk, Shizuka?" Shizuka tried to stand up but found it was excruciatingly hard to put pressure on the injured leg. "You might have some splinters. Here, I'll carry you."  
  
"I'm heavy," she said quietly. "I eat a lot."  
  
"That doesn't matter," he answered, carefully lifting her up. She wrapped her arms around his neck and put her head on his shoulder as he carried her to the clinic, which involved going past about 20 houses, then past the general store where Kaoru lay dead and finally to the last stretch of forest before hitting the clinic, which was a plain 2-story building made of brick painted an ugly beige color. Kiyoharu carried Shizuka all the way inside, every so often looking back to make sure Masao and Junko were still following behind. The quartet went inside, past the waiting and examination rooms into the rooms which were used more for minor operations and such. They were basically miniature hospital rooms, with beds and all. Kiyoharu set Shizuka down in the first bed he could find, then layered the blankets on top of her. The group decided to just set up their new home base in there, which was signified by Junko moving in a folding table and placing all the food on it. The group also organized a watch system where someone would stay awake for a shift of the night, then go to sleep while someone else watched. Right after the basics were out of the way, Shizuka's splinters got their second wind and began to hurt all over again.  
  
"Masao, help me look for some medical books," Kiyoharu asked, standing up from Shizuka's bedside. "I'm going to find out what's wrong with Shizuka and how to fix it."  
  
13 students remaining 


	5. Part Five

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Five  
  
31  
  
Shizuka rolled up her pants leg so that Kiyoharu could see the wound. It wasn't too big, but he looked at it carefully then looked at it with the help of a microscope and flashlight. Upon finding a few tiny splinters stuck in the wound, Junko brought him some tweezers and he began to pluck out the splinters, one by one. Shizuka was good about the whole thing, only actually yelling once and just hissing the rest of the times. After the splinters were removed and the wound bandaged, Masao looked for the other syptoms Shizuka was showing in their medical book of illnesses and cures, which was thankfully left behind for some reason.   
  
"Let's see...she feels cold to the touch, shivering, lips discolored..." Masao ran his finger over a few lines of kanji. He was always good at kanji..."Oh, here we go. She's got hypothermia."  
  
"Hypothermia?" Junko and Shizuka asked in unison. Neither of them had ever heard of that before, what with being city girls and always having access to heaters when it was cold.   
  
"Yeah, basically it means she's really cold."  
  
"Thanks for stating the obvious," Shizuka grumbled from her bed.   
  
"How do we fix it?" Junko asked.  
  
"We're on the right track what with trying to keep her warm. Although I think some of her blankets got wet from being outside." Masao motioned to Junko, who nodded and began to search the rooms for more dry blankets. She quickly returned with three more, which were somewhat itchy but would have to do. "Great. And apparently we're also supposed to give her hot food and drink. Speaking of, is anyone getting hungry?" Everyone immediately raised their hands. "Well, it is getting close to 'dinnertime', so I suppose we should eat something, huh?"  
  
"I'll go look at what we've got. We've got a whole crapload of stuff, though, I cleaned that store out pretty nicely." Kiyoharu nodded as he exited the room, leaving Masao looking over the medical book, Junko staring out of the window and Shizuka still in bed. She eventually asked for an aspirin to numb the stinging pain from where the splinters were extracted and swallowed it right as Kiyoharu re-entered the room.  
  
"Chicken curry all right with everyone? I never said I was a good cook." Everyone nodded or shrugged and said "sure" and Kiyoharu went back into the kitchen. See, the people who ran this clinic also lived there, as there was a house part attached to the normal clinic part, separated only by a locked door which was easily opened using Masao's axe. Kiyoharu was cooking in the kitchen and the other could begin to smell chicken curry very quickly.   
  
"What time is it?" Shizuka asked.  
  
"About 7:00 pm," Masao answered.  
  
"It's going to be getting dark soon, isn't it? Do you think we should draw the curtains and use flashlights to see one another if we need to?"  
  
"That's a good idea, these things are made of canvas so they won't let any light in at all," Junko said, holding one of the curtains in her hands.   
  
"This is weird," Masao said, breaking an uncomfortable silence. "Think of it, just one day ago all 30 of us were in the bus, thinking we were going on any normal study trip. And how wrong we were, right?" This caused both Junko and Shizuka to look down at the ground in silence, which meant Masao caused exactly what he was attempting to break. A few minutes later, Kiyoharu came in with four plates of chicken curry, four cups of tea and four sets of lacquered chopsticks.   
  
"So I kind of borrowed the plates and whatnot...I'll return them, swear." He scratched his head, making his already messy bleached blond hair pouf out even more. Shizuka noticed his roots were starting to grow back in, but that was still cute. She could just vaguely remember going to an underground rock show where the vocalist looked just like Kiyoharu. (Rock was banned by the government, so all not domestic idol pop concerts were literally held underground in concert venues that used to be nothing but dirt. They were sometimes called hinansho-shozu, or shelter shows, because some of the venues used to be bomb shelters.) That just made him even cuter...She smiled and ate her chicken curry.   
  
13 students remaining  
  
32  
  
"This is boring," Miki whined. The five girls were still in the mountain viewing platform as it was nearing 9:00pm.   
  
"It's boring but it's safe," Fujiko answered, becoming the voice of reason. She noticed Suzuko was looking away and mechanically chewing on the government bread. "At least we're not at risk of being killed."  
  
"I'm hungry," Nanako whined. "Let's go to the general store, then come back here."  
  
"All of us? That's too dangerous," Asuka pointed out. "Two of us should go."  
  
"I say Asuka and Nanako, since they so graciously volunteered," Fujiko added, smiling deviously. Asuka and Nanako looked at each other nervously, then shrugged and picked up their weapons (a shotgun and a set of ten stiletto-type knives, respectively) to turn to leave.   
  
"Do you just want us to get whatever we can find?" Nanako asked Miki.  
  
"Sure! I'm not up for anything particular," Miki replied. Suzuko and Fujiko agreed by nodding their heads.  
  
"Ok, good, we'll be back as soon as possible," Asuka said as she and Nanako left the platform and began to descend the actually very small mountain. The mountain was somewhat far from the general store, so they were going to take a while.   
  
"This rain! Is it ever going to stop?" Asuka asked, shielding her eyes from the rain, which seemed to be stabbing her eyes like tiny needles.   
  
"I don't think so, it's been going ever since we got here," Nanako answered. "It's cold, isn't it? It's November and it's raining. Just great."  
  
"I hope there's still stuff left at the general store, I really want to get some good food to eat," Asuka said wishfully, closing her eyes and remembering her favorite meal of all time, Korean barbecue. What she wouldn't give for some Korean barbecue. Hell, what she wouldn't give for some good food. Nanako swore she could see someone moving to the left of her, but by 9 pm it was dark, so she couldn't tell. She didn't have very good night vision. She tapped her knives to make sure they were still there, all ten of them in their pouch clipped onto the belt loops of her skirt. She opened up the pouch and held one of the knives ready as the person stepped out in front of her. She could see that it was Kanako Niimura, her right knee sock soaked in blood, carrying the katana that used to belong to Sayaka Ichiki. Behind her was another figure, presumably Toru.  
  
"No, don't fear, we don't want to kill you," Kanako said defensively. "Toru and I were just getting sick of being in that farmhouse, especially considering there were two corpses in there. The smell was becoming unbearable."  
  
"Corpses?"  
  
"Two guys threatened us, so in self-defense we took them out," Toru explained.  
  
"Oh..."  
  
"Where are you two headed?"  
  
"Oh, um, to the general store," Asuka hastily explained, shaking her long hair out of her face.   
  
"Can we come? I want to hopefully get a bandage for Kanako's leg," Toru said, pointing to Kanako's bloodied sock.   
  
"Hold on, we need to debate." Nanako and Asuka turned to each other and began speaking in whispers.  
  
"What do you think?" Nanako asked.  
  
"I say trust them, they said they wouldn't kill us, plus I know Kanako well and she doesn't lie. Ever," Asuka said, defending Kanako.  
  
"Fine, fine, I'll trust them too."  
  
"Great, that's wonderful." Asuka and Nanako turned back to Toru and Kanako. "Well, we've decided to trust you two, since your intentions seem good. Do you two have anywhere to hide?"  
  
"Honestly, no, we're just going to conceal ourselves in some bushes somewhere," Kanako answered, shrugging.  
  
'Wait a minute...our enemy list! Our enemy list has Toru on it!' Nanako suddenly thought silently. 'Don't trust him, Nanako! Get out your knives!' She drew two knives and held them delicately in her fingers. Kanako had excellent night vision and saw it coming, so she dove in front of her brother and spread out her arms as if to protect him.  
  
"Don't hurt him!" she screamed, glaring daggers at Asuka, then Nanako. "You two are so judgmental! Just because Toru hung out with Shojiro, you guys think he's an enemy! He's just a human too!" Toru could hear that his sister was beginning to sniffle loudly. "Let's get out of here, Toru, we're going to the general store alone." She used Toru as a human crutch and the two began to walk off towards the general store, but not before Kanako turned back and gave Nanako and Asuka the middle finger. Nanako boiled over with anger and threw the first knife, which made a hollow sound as it hit and stuck...inside a tree. Kanako and Toru were already pretty far away.   
  
"Dammit!! They got away!" Nanako screamed.  
  
"You shouldn't have been so harsh," Asuka said quietly, barely noticeable above the rain.  
  
"Ugh...Let's just keep going."  
  
13 students remaining  
  
33  
  
"She's just a bitch, that's all," Kanako said, shrugging her shoulders as she released herself from Toru's human crutch grip and hobbled over to the door of the general store. She opened the door and stepped in something wet, then looked down and screamed.   
  
"Sengakuji!! Someone killed him!" she shrieked.  
  
"Ssh, be quiet, Kanako," Toru whispered.  
  
"Sorry," Kanako whispered back. "Anyway, Kaoru's dead, puddle of blood, how sad..."  
  
"Welcome to the game nobody wanted to play," Toru muttered as he turned on a small penlight and began to search the shelves for anything that could help Kanako. Kiyoharu only took two of each item back when he was still ransacking the completely full general store, so there was still some gauze left, as well as gauze tape and rubbing alcohol. Toru took all of these products and then looked around for a separate room from the showroom. He tapped at a door marked Private, then took ten steps back and ran towards the door, hitting it with enough force to swing it open.   
  
"It was unlocked," Kanako pointed out after Toru's little display of strength.  
  
"Whatever," he replied. "Follow me." The two went up six stairs and through another unlocked door into the house area of the store, which turned out to be on the second story. Still using his penlight and Kanako's excellent vision, Toru managed to find a living room. Kanako found the couch and sat down on it, her injured leg out. Toru placed the penlight on an ottoman and began to work on Kanako's leg.  
  
"This is going to sting," he warned as he poured some rubbing alcohol onto a cotton ball. "Just try to be quiet, okay?" He counted to three, then swabbed down Kanako's injury. She hissed loudly and made noises like she was closing her mouth tightly to hold back a scream, but managed to do all right. After that, Toru wrapped up her injury with gauze, then taped it together. "There, is that better?"  
  
Kanako stood up.  
  
"It is better! Sure, it's not 100% better, but it's just good enough. Thanks, Toru, you rule." She hugged Toru.  
  
"Oh...no problem...um, you're cutting off my air supply..."  
  
"Agh! Sorry!" Kanako let go of her bear hug grip. "So, do you think we should stay here or try to move on?"  
  
"I think we should recuperate here for a few hours, then head out to the north after that. I've noted all the forbidden zones so far, we could go to the clinic, tourist association or lighthouse if we move north and keep along the eastern coast of the island."   
  
"Wow, you're good at this," Kanako commented.  
  
"This?"  
  
"Reading maps and stuff."  
  
"Oh, right. It's nothing. Anyway."  
  
"I think we should go to the tourist association."  
  
"Why? Why not the clinic?"  
  
"I don't know...my intuition's just telling me we shouldn't go to the clinic." Kanako lay back down on the old, worn couch to rest and maybe get some sleep, lulled to sleep by the rhythm of the rain.  
  
13 students remaining  
  
34  
  
"She ran off after I told her off," Nanako reported. It wasn't until almost 11:00 pm that Nanako and Asuka got back from going to the general store. The five girls were now munching on strangely named snacks, which Nanako took a lot of. (Nanako took only stuff that didn't need to be cooked, as Kiyoharu took the only propane grill in the store.)   
  
"I still think you were too harsh," Asuka butted in, crunching a pretzel in half.  
  
"So? It's in my own defense. My mom taught me that my self-defense is the most important thing."   
  
"Hey, Suzuko, you haven't talked a lot lately, what's up?"  
  
"Nothing. My mind is just eating itself," Suzuko answered, playing with one of her braids. "Rotting away with memories, you know?"  
  
"Yeah, I hear you there. Mine is, too," Miki added. Fujiko nodded silently, too engrossed in her rice ball to be able to talk.   
  
"So, it's almost 11, is anyone getting tired?" Suzuko asked.  
  
"I am," Miki answered. Miki had always gone to bed early...  
  
"Maybe we should instate a watch system? Like everyone else goes to bed while someone watches until a certain time, then their duty is over and they awake the next person to watch?" Nanako suggested. "I saw it in a movie once, it was a good idea."  
  
"Nanako's right, who wants to be the first watch?" Miki asked.  
  
"I will," Asuka volunteered. The other four began to thank her profusely, making their day packs into pillows and wishing they had some blankets as they wiggled around on the floor of the viewing platform like worms that were swept away from their underground habitats. Asuka simply said, "no problem" once and sat down on her own day pack to make a little seat for herself. Within about 30 minutes, everyone else was asleep or, as in the case of Suzuko, just pretending to be asleep. She was always good at pretending. She felt around for her mace, which came with a nice leather cover for the actual spiked ball. You know, for transferring the product from one place to the next without risking getting it stuck in your own head. It was in her day pack, just where she had put it after getting to the viewing platform. She patted it.   
  
'You'll become very useful soon, my sweet,' she thought to herself, patting the mace again as if it were a small child sleeping beside her.  
  
13 students remaining  
  
35  
  
"Shizuka?" Kiyoharu tried to open the door as quietly as possible, which didn't work. Shizuka popped out of her nice deep sleep immediately.  
  
"Huh?" she asked the darkness.  
  
"It's me. I can't sleep."  
  
"I was asleep."  
  
"Oh, I'm sorry..."  
  
"No, don't leave. I can't see you. I want to see you."  
  
"Hold on, I'm checking to see if the curtains are shut. Okay, they are." Kiyoharu turned on a battery-powered lantern he found in a coat closet, keeping it on low power so it wouldn't be as bright. Shizuka squinted but got adjusted to the light quickly. "How are you feeling?"  
  
"I shed three of the blankets," she bragged, pointing to a multicolored lump on the floor. "I'm getting better. What color are my lips?"   
  
"They're light blue now, but I can see some pink coming back into them," Kiyoharu informed Shizuka as he stood over her face. She brought his head down to hers and kissed him.   
  
"I really appreciate you actually caring about me," she said once they pulled away.   
  
"But so do Junko and Masao..." Kiyoharu began.  
  
"No, you care about me in -that- way. Junko's my best friend, sure, but we're not in love. That would be gross. As for Masao, I never knew him that well until now. But I knew you since...what, fifth grade? And I've liked you since my hormones kicked in at about 13, so that's seventh grade." Shizuka smiled with her surreal blue-pink lips. "I just couldn't bring myself to tell you. Now I fear it's too late."  
  
"Shizuka, I only have one question for you, and I want to know the answer, no matter how long it takes to get it."  
  
"Um...ok, ask the question."  
  
"What's the real story behind those scars?"  
  
"Do you really want to know?" Shizuka sighed, obviously bothered by the query. Kiyoharu gently touched her hand.  
  
"Of course I do, Shizuka, I love you, I want to know." He noticed a circle-shaped burn on the arm he was touching and moved his hand away from it.   
  
"Fine...I had to stop wearing girls' uniforms in fourth grade because my stepdad was abusing me so much and leaving so many marks that it became a grotesque sight to look at my legs...which it still is. Of course, I was the talk of the school. Look at that girl, she's wearing a boys' uniform. Of course little 10-year-old kids wouldn't understand...the pain unless they were also going through it. I didn't know of anyone who was. I had to lie and say a school bully was hurting me because my stepdad threatened to kill me if I told anyone. To this day I still haven't told anyone who could do anything about it."  
  
"Not even your mother? Oh, I'm sorry, did I interrupt?"  
  
"No, you didn't interrupt. I haven't told Mom yet, no, I'm afraid she'll tell my stepdad and he really will go through with killing me. Which puts me in a bad situation because I want to win this game, but I don't want to have to go home to him." Shizuka looked away and bit a blue-pink lip, reopening a reoccuring scab on her lip which she got by biting it too much. "I don't know what I want to do."   
  
"Neither do I," Kiyoharu said in his gentle voice, holding Shizuka tightly to his chest. She could hear his heartbeat and it sounded like the most securing sound in the world, like the civilized world could come toppling around them and she would still feel completely safe. He kissed her forehead and she hugged him tighter, eventually falling back asleep still in his arms.   
  
"She's been through so much..." he whispered aloud into the darkness, not talking to anyone in particular.   
  
13 students remaining  
  
36  
  
Suzuko was awakened by a drowsy Asuka, who went to sleep almost immediately. Suzuko took the leather sheath off her mace and held it at her side, listening as the chains clicked against each other and made the tiniest of sounds, almost unnoticeable. She held the handle up above her head so the ball was dangling in front of her chest, then had to decide which girl to strike first. She decided on Miki, because Miki was the ringleader and the most annoying. Little prick. Suzuko brought the mace down with a lot of force, striking Miki in the side. She shot awake, gasping as she saw that it was Suzuko attacking her with the mace. Her screams awoke the rest of the girls, who decided to save their own asses and run for it, all in different directions.   
  
"Suzuko!! What are you doing?" Miki asked, her breathing becoming more labored as Suzuko kept on attacking the same spot, the ball digging deeper and deeper with each fell swoop.  
  
"I'm playing the game," Suzuko replied, grinning and attacking over and over.  
  
"Stop! You're crazy!"   
  
"I'm just playing the game," Suzuko said nonchalantly as she dug the spiked ball into Miki's side once more, then pulled it out and wrapped the chain around Miki's neck. "Do you want to see home one last time?" Miki nodded, which was hard considering she was in a chokehold. "Okay." Suzuko dragged Miki over to the edge of the viewing platform. "Look, right over there, those lights." She pointed to a vast landscape of mostly white lights, but some reds, blues and neons mixed in. "That's Kobe. Good old Kobe. Remember that I will be the only one who shall return to Kobe." Suzuko tightened the chain grip on Miki's throat and heard the last breath escape from her throat, then she let go of Miki and threw her lifeless body down the mountain, hearing the sickening crunch upon Miki's landing.   
  
Suzuko didn't even bother to cleanse her mace of blood, she'd only do that after finding another victim. But whom first? They all took their day packs. Smart girls...so they were all armed too. Dammit. She sheathed the mace and looped it over her shoulder, then looked around. They escaped under the guise of night and rain, which meant they could be hard to find. But she would find them.  
  
She hopped out of the platform and began to run down the mountain, most of the time skidding and just letting gravity take her down the mountain as it was willing to. Of course, the mountain was slicked with rain, so she would slip sometimes but eventually regain her footing and start over again. She landed at the very foot of the mountain with knees scraped so badly it looked like she fought a losing battle against a wildcat of some sort. She knelt down as if she were praying to regain her footing once more and then started running towards the southwest because she swore she could see Asuka running off in that direction.  
  
12 students remaining 


	6. Part Six

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Six  
  
37  
  
Nanako ran south towards the general store. She didn't even care what she ran into on the way, even though she tripped over an exposed tree root and she probably sprained or broke her ankle. She just wanted to make sure Suzuko didn't come after her first.   
  
"But why, Suzuko?" she asked the darkness as she ran. "I never would've expected you to turn on us. It just doesn't seem right." She checked her leather patch, 9 knives left. "Then again, nothing seems right in this game anymore..."  
  
Suzuko, meanwhile, was hot on Fujiko's trail. Well, okay, she wasn't hot on anyone's trail, considering she couldn't see where they ran off to anyway, but little did she know that Fujiko went east, towards the lighthouse. She had no idea that Asuka went north, Fujiko went west and Nanako went south. She just picked one of the directions and ran in it. Easy enough, right? Her day pack bounced up and down on her shoulder as she went, listening for anything that sounded even remotely like a person running. It was going to be a while because Nanako got an obvious head start, but Suzuko was going to catch all of them.  
  
And then her mace would be caked in blood, of course.  
  
12 students remaining  
  
38  
  
The crackling noise was now becoming more of an annoyance than anything else.   
  
"Hey everyone, just a few things to report. First off, the forbidden zones. At 1am, H-6. At 3am, E-1 and at 5am, I-6. We only have one new death to report and that is Female Student No. 10, Miki Aizawa. Only 12 of you guys left now, the numbers are steadily dwindling, but still good luck to all of you!"   
  
"Toyama," Shizuka whispered angrily, still half-asleep. She awoke with her neck aching and looked around. "So it's midnight? It doesn't feel like midnight."   
  
"It is," a drowsy Kiyoharu answered.   
  
"It's so stupid that he's still encouraging us, like 'yeah you can do it', but I don't want to. I know I killed Shinya, I'm still somewhat guilty over that but I guess it had to be done, right?" Shizuka looked away from Kiyoharu, who was still sitting in that uncomfortable chair next to her bed.   
  
"You killed him?"  
  
"Yeah...he was going to kill me if I didn't do something."  
  
"How many shots did it take?"  
  
"Just one. And I think I fired five when Shojiro was in the house."  
  
"So you've fired six bullets?"  
  
"I think so..."  
  
"Do you want me to reload your gun for you?"  
  
"I'm feeling better, I'll do it myself. I actually feel a bit warmer, I shed a few of my blankets while I was asleep." Shizuka rose from her bed and turned on the lantern once more, giving her enough light to put more bullets in her gun. It was surprisingly easy, easier than she thought it would be. She snapped the gun shut and then pointed it like she was aiming it. She then laughed and put the safety back on. "I was just joking, I would never ever EVER shoot you."   
  
"Are you still tired?"  
  
"Yeah...I'm probably going back to sleep. Are you comfortable in that chair?" She turned off the lantern and climbed back into her bed.  
  
"It doesn't matter as long as I know you're safe."  
  
Shizuka fell asleep quickly, but kept her gun by her just in case.  
  
12 students remaining  
  
39  
  
Kanako was still asleep at 1am. This worried Toru because he feared that they wouldn't be able to move freely under the guise of darkness. Instead of waking his sister, though, he just sat and let her sleep.   
  
"It's so boring up here," he mused to nobody unless Kanako was awake. "Absolutely nothing to do and no Shojiro to kill. He hasn't come around here for a while." He still had a few hand grenades left. If he could hit Shojiro with one and keep him so that he couldn't move, then he could blow him up. As for Sakura, he was sure Kanako could figure something out. Kanako was half dangling off the side of the bed, her long and slightly wavy black hair also dangling. Toru pushed her back onto the bed and she awoke for just a moment, then went right back to sleep.   
  
Outside the general store, Nanako was pausing to take a rest and decided to dive inside the store and hide behind the counter. She did just that.  
  
'You're brilliant, Nanako, there's no way Suzuko can find you here. It's too dark to see almost anything. I swear there was a puddle in the store, maybe some rain just came in.' She sat behind the counter hugging her knees and shivering. It was cold...well, it was November, what exactly did you expect? This wasn't some kind of tropical paradise. Well, the propagandist textbooks tried to pass off Japan as one during the summer, but it was more like a humid hell. At least to her...  
  
Suzuko was meticulously checking the areas where she thought someone could hide, getting no results every time. She was getting a bit annoyed. Didn't they know they had a very small chance of survival anyway? She knew very well that she would be the one who was going home alive, not anyone else. Why not just remove their pain now, right? She could do that. It all added up, at least in her head.   
  
She came upon the general store and sniffed the air. It smelled of blood which was now congealing and starting to majorly stink. She waved the air and walked inside with her mace shouldered.   
  
"Is anyone in here?" she asked in her sweet voice, walking around very slowly.  
  
'Just hide...be very quiet...she won't find you..." Nanako hugged her knees tighter and sucked in her stomach as Suzuko walked around the store.   
  
"Oh yeah, the counter, completely forgot to check there," Suzuko said aloud. Nanako's heart began to beat faster and faster as she touched her leather knife pouch. Was it possible to open it without making a sound? She tried.   
  
Nope.  
  
The little snap opened with the tiniest click sound. She heard Suzuko's feet clicking as she turned towards Nanako and walked forward, kicking the air until she felt something there instead of just air. It turned out to be Nanako's leg. Suzuko unsheathed her mace right as Nanako took a knife and shoved it right into Suzuko's calf, then twisted it around a few times. Suzuko growled much like an angered dog would as Nanako twisted the knife, then drove her mace right down into Nanako's skull. That's right, bitch, suffer. Nanako began to grunt as she twisted that knife until Suzuko could feel her grip loosening on the knife as her whole body went limp like a ragdoll's. Suzuko then extracted the spiked ball from Nanako's now smashed skull and left her body there.   
  
11 students remaining  
  
40  
  
"I heard something," Toru whispered to Kanako. He gathered Sayaka's katana and went downstairs, hearing Kanako following behind, presumably with that scary whip. She also had a normal brightness flashlight which she turned on before Suzuko had a chance to hide behind anything.   
  
"Harada?" they asked in unison. Kanako connected bloody mace to smashed skull of Nanako Shizawa pretty quickly and screamed, unlooping the whip and beginning to smack it around on the ground uncontrollably.  
  
"Calm down, Kanako, it's going to be all right." Toru took out the remaining blowdarts from one of his pockets. "Remember these?" Suzuko took the chance while Kanako was distracted to twirl her mace around and chop off some of the whip with it, leaving a frayed end instead of a nice tip. Kanako gasped as she found that the nice smacking tip of her whip was discarded on the floor. Toru looked around for the bamboo launcher and then realized he left it upstairs, so he went to get it, leaving Kanako and Suzuko alone.   
  
"What happened?" Kanako asked.  
  
"I killed Shizawa," Suzuko replied like it was nothing. What'd you do today? Oh, nothing. Just killed someone. "She was annoying me."  
  
"Are you going to kill me too?" Kanako asked, horrified. Suzuko was very proficient at swinging that mace around, she noticed.   
  
"I want to win." Suzuko smiled her devious grin as Toru returned with the bamboo launcher. He placed it in his mouth and was about to load it when Suzuko swung her mace around and lopped off almost all of the launcher, except for a small nub hanging out of his mouth which was too small for the dart anyway. Toru looked at the nub, then shrugged and Kanako began to whip Suzuko again, hitting the same area in her leg that Tetsuko slashed. Suzuko gasped and slumped onto the floor.  
  
"Toru! Now!" Toru nodded and placed a blowdart in his hand like a normal dart, then threw it like a normal dart. It hit Suzuko in the arm, but she simply took it out, clenching her teeth just a bit. It didn't hurt at all. She tossed it aside as the needle snapped, then tried to hop back up. Damn, Nanako's knife was still in there. She took that out, too, causing a fountain of blood to open up and start spurting. Kanako noticed Nanako's corpse was staring at her. Suzuko didn't even bother to close her eyes...Toru took out the katana, but Suzuko wrapped her mace chain around it and tugged it from his hand. She stepped on it and then made a 'come and get it' face. Kanako was getting frustrated. She whipped like a maniac, breaking things on the walls but only slightly injuring Suzuko.   
  
"Go get the throwing stars!" Kanako shouted to Toru, who began to go up the stairs again as...  
  
TUK.  
  
One of Nanako's knives went soaring through the air and hit Kanako in the neck. A small bit of the tip was sticking out of the front of her neck.  
  
"Toru..." she sputtered, falling forward. Toru put her head in his lap and looked over her. "I won't make it."  
  
"No, Kanako, don't say that."  
  
"I'm...sorry I couldn't be a better fighter. I...suppose this is...goodbye." Kanako put her cold hand in Toru's as her breathing slowed down and eventually stopped. Her shiny black hair cascaded around her body, making a haunting corpse. Toru bit his lip to stop the tears that were coming and placed Kanako on the ground, closing her eyes and crossing her hands across her chest. He stood up from doing this respect to the dead and then dropped the blowdarts.  
  
"Kill me," he commanded Suzuko. "Come on, kill me. I doubted I was going to survive even this long. Go on, you know you want to." Suzuko lunged forward with a "graaaah!!" and stuck her mace into his jugular.  
  
'Kanako, wait for me. I'm coming, too. We can be together and even see Grandma again. Won't it be nice? Maybe the afterlife will be better than this life,' Toru thought as he felt the pain leaving his body. Suzuko removed her mace once again and Toru fell down next to Kanako, both of them suffering fatal wounds to their necks.   
  
Suzuko simply looked at their corpses, then began to take their weapons.  
  
9 students remaining  
  
41  
  
"Nn? Shojiro?" Sakura asked, waking up on an old itchy couch in a building she had never seen before. She looked around from side to side, not able to see much of anything since it was obviously still dark. She looked at her watch. It was just past 4 am. She looked around again. "Shojiro?"   
  
"I'm over here." Shojiro was sitting on a loveseat on the other side of the room.  
  
"Where are we?"  
  
"The tourist association. You were pretty much asleep when we got here, so I just put you on that couch. Nothing to it." Shojiro looked away like it wasn't anything. "It's almost 4 am. Announcements'll be on in two hours. We were down to 12 kids at midnight. Miki got killed."   
  
"Aizawa?" Sakura asked, shocked.   
  
"Yup. So, according to my list, these are the ones still alive: Suzuki, both Niimuras, Moritaka, obviously myself, Arai, Harada, Nishima, Shizawa, Sasei and you."   
  
"So, when the sun comes up, if it is coming up, do you want to go out and eradicate the rest of them?"  
  
"You'd better believe it!"  
  
'And then I'll eradicate you,' Sakura added to herself. The special capsule in her day pack was a cyanide capsule, which could be opened up and poured into any kind of drink or food. 'I'll kill them all, then serve you some Yanagi family tea with a special ingredient for lunch. You'll die and I'll win. It couldn't be any easier.'   
  
Little did Sakura know that Shojiro found the cyanide capsule and was planning exactly the same thing, except that of course Sakura would be served the tea (and die). He saw the evil grin spreading across Sakura's face.  
  
'Heh. What little you know. I cut off my emotions long ago, in fact I wasn't actually born with any. Aren't I a good actor, Sakura? You'll find out for certain with my kiss of death tea later on today.'  
  
They both thought 'sucker' at the same time.  
  
"Um...so...should we wait until after the 6 am announcement to get out of here?" Sakura asked, standing up from the itchy couch.  
  
"I think we should, the announcement will most likely wake everyone else up. The numbers are dwindling quickly," he added in his most deadpan voice.   
  
"I'll say." Sakura didn't want to admit that she was somewhat scared, but knew that with that machine gun and her skills (being a gang girl, she knew a lot about hand-to-hand unarmed combat as well as armed combat) that nobody else stood a ghost of a chance.  
  
9 students remaining  
  
42  
  
Asuka was on the northern shore, which was much more rocky than the southern one. To her right was a cliff, which was in a forbidden zone. To her left a short walk away was the Shinto shrine, also in a forbidden zone. Basically, she could only go south but was deathly afraid to, just in case Suzuko was still waiting on the mountain. She was also puzzled as to why Suzuko would suddenly betray her friends like that. One image stuck in Asuka's head. Right as she awoke she saw Suzuko brutalizing Miki with her mace and saw the ends of her long, braided hair covered in blood. It was a haunting sight. She had her shotgun at the ready, even loaded and with the safety off, just in case Suzuko suddenly came for her.  
  
She sat on a rock and looked out at the sea. It was still raining steadily, so the sea was grey, not a nice shining blue like it usually would be. It was also cold. Asuka dug around in her day pack but found no relief for the cold. Of course she had her long-sleeved blouse on, but it was made of lightweight cotton and therefore didn't retain much heat. Shivering, she hugged her knees just like Nanako had done in the general shop.  
  
Of course Asuka didn't know this.  
  
Asuka looked on her wrist, looking at the friendship bracelets that she had. One was pink and red. That one was from Nanako. The next was different shades of blue, from Suzuko. After that was a pink and purple one, from Miki. There was a green one from Fujiko and a purple and yellow one from Sayaka. They all were over at Sayaka's house one weekend for a sleepover and stayed up late making friendship bracelets and chatting. Now it all seemed so trivial. She undid the knot on the blue bracelet and glared at it as if Suzuko were really wrapped around her wrist. With a heaving sound, she chucked the bracelet out into the churning sea as far as it would go and watched as a wave swallowed it up.  
  
She dangled her legs off of the rock. Having played soccer for as long as she could remember, she fancied herself very good at the game and it showed in her toned, tanned legs. She was about to have to use those legs...  
  
Suzuko was tired. After having traced down Nanako and killed her, she decided to go north to the northern coast and take a breather, passing by the lighthouse first. Suzuko wasn't stupid, she knew someone would probably be hiding in there. First she kicked the door to the lighthouse itself open and looked inside, smelling the musty smell of old wood. There were spiralling steps leading up to the control panel of the light. Suzuko poked back outside, picked up a pebble and threw it at one of the walls, hoping the sound would scare anyone in there out. She heard no staccato running beat, though, but to be safe she ran up the stairs and into the control room. She surveyed the control room, then sighed and ran back down the stairs and back out the door, which was slamming against the side of the building every so often. The wind was picking up...Suzuko's skirt flittered in the wind, as well as the chains on her mace. She also had the whip, the blowdarts, the knives and Miki's gun in her day pack, so Suzuko was happy. She knew nobody stood a chance.   
  
Next to the lighthouse was a house, obviously built for the people who ran the lighthouse. Bingo. Suzuko ran to the door and kicked it open, hearing it slam against the wall of the foyer. Fujiko was hidden in a child's bedroom, decorated with pictures of cute cartoon animals. She heard the sound of the door slamming against the wall and looked for somewhere to hide. She opened the closet door, which was like an automatic door except you obviously pulled it open yourself. Unfortunately for her, the wheels on the track needed to be oiled and they squeaked as she slid open the door just far enough for her body to hide in. She was only issued a few grenades. Grenades? Honestly. Why didn't she get a gun?   
  
Suzuko walked around the house, which wasn't very big on the inside either. She peeked in the living room. Nothing. She peeked in the kitchen. Nothing. She looked in the master bedroom. Still nothing. Then she came upon the child's bedroom, with a sign reading Yumiko on the door. She opened the door very slowly, holding the chain of her mace so it wouldn't make any noise. First Suzuko looked under the bed, then behind a pile of toys, then by a chest of drawers, then came upon the closet. Instead of opening it using her mace she opened it like any normal person would and saw Fujiko crammed in there amongst some clothes.   
  
"Ah, Fujiko," Suzuko said like a teacher who was about to lecture a child. Fujiko noted that there was blood in Suzuko's long braids and it was starting to smell very rancid. "I don't want to kill you."  
  
"You...you don't?"  
  
"No! I've always trusted in your strength. Come with me." Timidly Fujiko left the closet and followed Suzuko out of the house and up the stairs to the control panel. Suzuko noted a door on the left side and kicked it open to find that there was a lookout porch, wrapped around the giant light (which, of course, was not lit). "Look, look over there." Suzuko pointed to a clump of lights on the mainland. "See? That's Kobe."  
  
"Wow...we look like we're so close to Kobe, don't we?" Fujiko asked. The wind picked up. Suzuko's hair blew around like two small whips, accidentally hitting Fujiko on her shoulder. Fujiko's long hair, on the other hand, almost stabbed Suzuko in the eye. Fujiko leaned out against the guardrail on the porch while Suzuko stepped behind her.  
  
'Fool, you were always so easily misled. Prepare to die.' Suzuko had already turned off the safety on the gun. She placed the cold metal against the back of Fujiko's head, right in the dimple before the nape, and fired.   
  
Fujiko was thrown forward with the force and her body plummeted three stories, landing on the ground and making the sickening cracking noise of bones breaking on impact. Her arms were thrown out at strange angles which couldn't be accomplished by normally functioning bones and her legs were almost spread-eagle. A tiny pool of blood was forming underneath her neck, becoming diluted a small bit by the rainwater.  
  
"Don't trust everyone," Suzuko mused to the dead Fujiko. "Because sometimes, your friends can turn out to be the proverbial wolf in sheep's clothing." Suzuko put the safety back on her gun, then chucked it back in her day pack and went down the stairs again.  
  
8 students remaining 


	7. Part Seven

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Seven  
  
43  
  
The clock struck 6 am and once again, the mysterious speakers crackled. Toyama had taken to putting one of the most annoying beeping sounds right before his announcement, so it woke up everyone on the island (and maybe even a few people on Megijima, too).   
  
"Good morning everyone! First, of course, are the new forbidden zones: D-8 at 7 am, C-6 at 9 am and B-7 at 11 am. Now, the deaths, and there are actually some this time. For the males, No. 5 Toru Niimura. For the females, No. 3 Kanako Niimura, No. 12 Nanako Shizawa and No. 13 Fujiko Sasei, bringing the total number of deaths to 22 and the total number of people still alive to 8." Instead of putting a cheesy inspirational slogan at the end of his message, Toyama ended it there.   
  
The beeping, of course, awoke Shizuka from a nice, peaceful sleep. The loud sound had also started her heart racing and she couldn't make it stop. It was like someone kept pounding it with a sledgehammer...She sat up out of bed and looked around. That's right, they were still in the clinic. She smelled something cooking over in the kitchen and got up out of bed to go investigate.  
  
Masao and Junko awoke, both of them having slept in the living room on two different futons. Kiyoharu had been awake for a while, seeing as he was an insomniac and usually only got about four hours of sleep anyway. He was the one cooking, making some pancakes using a "just add water" mix and some of the bottled water he got from the general store. He was only using as much water as minimally possible, seeing as they were running low on the supply he got from the store. He'd have to look into alternate water supply...wasn't there a well around here somewhere?   
  
Shizuka staggered into the kitchen. She was most definitely not a morning person and was barely used to being summoned at 6 am.   
  
"'Morning," she muttered. "Whatchu doin'?"  
  
"Didn't sleep well, so decided to make some breakfast," Kiyoharu replied.  
  
"Cool, cool. When's it gon' be ready?"  
  
"Really soon. Go see if Masao and Junko are awake."  
  
"Mmmkay."   
  
"Nnngh," Junko said as she awoke. "I was sleeping good, too," she added, looking over at Masao. He was also good at karate, he and Takashi even had the same color belt. One could tell he was good at the sport, as his arms and legs were toned. Junko was glad she also played a sport, because she believed it gave her a better chance...  
  
"You're awake too?" Masao asked.  
  
"Yeah. Damn announcements. Did you actually hear them?"   
  
"No, I didn't. I bet Kiyoharu did, though, we could just ask him." Masao sat up. He had thrown off his school coat in the night and Junko was trying her very best not to gawk. (Of course it was hard not to, it was almost like he was flaunting himself for her!)   
  
"I smell pancakes," Junko observed. She looked at Masao and he looked at her.  
  
"Kiyoharu," they said in unison. She sat up from her futon as well and noticed that Masao was checking her out, too. She simply brushed it off and got up, feeling hungry all of a sudden. "Hey, Kiyoharu, did you hear the announcements?"  
  
"Yeah, both the Niimuras, Shizawa and Sasei died."  
  
"BOTH the Niimuras? Maybe they died together?" Junko suggested.   
  
"Could be." Kiyoharu used a borrowed spatula to flip the pancake. Shizuka was sitting at the table, slumped over a two-day-old newspaper. She looked melancholy as she scanned the paper. "All I know is that there are only eight of us left."  
  
"EIGHT?!" Junko screamed in disbelief.  
  
"Quiet, Junko," Shizuka grumbled.  
  
"Eight? Only eight?"  
  
"Yeah, it's been..." Kiyoharu consulted his watch. "Almost an entire day since this started."  
  
"Time flies when your classmates are dying," Shizuka muttered.  
  
"What's our course of action today?" Masao asked as Shizuka stood up and got four plates.   
  
"Stay here as long as possible. Shizuka's still healing," Kiyoharu replied.   
  
"Yeah, I noticed the color's beginning to come back to her cheeks," Masao pointed out.   
  
"I'm surprised we haven't been attacked too much yet," Junko piped up. "I've only needed to use my nunchaku once." She had them in her day pack. Well, at least she knew where they were.  
  
"Nunchaku?" Masao asked. "Hey, wanna trade weapons?"  
  
"I thought you'd never ask," Junko replied, smiling just a bit.  
  
8 students remaining  
  
44  
  
Asuka was still on the northern shore. She only slept for about thirty minutes and that was incredibly uncomfortable because of the rocks she used as a "bed". She was awake for the announcements and then realized that, aside from Suzuko, she was the only one of her group that was still alive. It all seemed so strange. Just three days ago, they were planning to go to the mall on Friday night, see a movie, maybe flirt around...Now most of them were dead. She watched the waves go in and out, bringing in and out chilly air. It was still raining.  
  
Suzuko napped in the house attached to the lighthouse for a few hours, then rose with the morning announcements (as did everyone else still alive on the island). Checking her student list, she crossed off everyone who was dead.  
  
"Only seven more people left to kill," Suzuko muttered aloud to nobody. "Hm, Sakura and Shojiro might not be as easy to kill, but maybe if I side with them and then betray them...I could be closer to winning." She chewed on her pencil, which was a terrible habit of hers, then stood up from the bed (the master bed, of course, sleeping by a corpse wasn't her forte) and exited the house. It was still raining.  
  
"What direction should I go in?" She wished for someone to play jan-ken-pon against to get a definite answer, but instead settled on randomly picking a direction. She picked north. Using the provided cheap, 100-yen tin compass, she pointed herself north and then began to walk, checking the compass to make sure she was still going the right way. She could hear the sound of the waves getting closer and closer and could also hear the sound of someone singing. Suzuko paused.   
  
'Who has a voice like that?' She listened for a few seconds, then came the epiphany. 'ASUKA!!!' Suzuko began to run towards Asuka, mace out, ready to throw it out at any moment. Asuka heard the footsteps and turned, holding her shotgun. Sadly, she had no idea how to use it, so she sat there jamming the trigger and waiting for something to happen. She gasped when Suzuko got close enough to swing and her thoughts quickly ceased when the mace was jammed into her forehead. Suzuko put her foot on Asuka's chest and heaved to pull the mace out, then kicked Asuka forward and watched as her body descended off of the rocks and was presumably swept away in the waves. Unfortunately, Asuka's hand was still firm on the gun when she was kicked, so now a valuable shotgun was floating around in the choppy Seto Inland Sea.  
  
'Oh well, you win some, you lose some, right? Asuka learned that the hard way.' Suzuko sneered towards the water and looked through Asuka's day pack, finding an unopened bottle of water. Suzuko quickly ripped it open and drank half of it. Killing made her thirsty.  
  
7 students remaining  
  
45  
  
Sakura's feet tapped on the white stairs that led you up to the third level at Kitagawa Jr. High. She was running late to class again and was desperately hoping that their algebra teacher Mr. Fujiwara wouldn't notice. She rolled up her skirt and tossed back her hair right outside the door to class 3-A and then opened it to see Mr. Fujiwara teaching as normal. She nodded to him and then looked at the class...and gasped. Everyone was in their normal seating arrangement except...well, they didn't look so good. Kazuo Hanagata was sitting as normal, except his skin was snow white and there was a small red circle on his forehead. Tomoko Daidouji was nothing but a red pulp. Takashi Hirai had no head. Kanako Niimura's throat had a gaping slit in it. Shinji Asaba's right wrist had a small red hole in it and the back of his white school shirt was soaked in blood. Toru Niimura had red holes all over one side of his neck. Naomi Fujisaki was also a red pulp. Daisuke Kirishima was also headless. Sho Satsuki had a circle on his throat. Sayaka Ichiki's wrists were slashed. Akito Kanzaki's school shirt was completely red around his stomach. Tetsuko Matsutani had a bullet hole in her forehead. Shuko Inada was the other red pulp. Kaoru Sengakuji had ten bullet holes in him, mostly on his torso. The side of Miki Aizawa's school uniform was a strange brown from the bloodred mixing with navy blue. Shinya Misao's school shirt had a circle of blood around the heart. Asuka Nishima's forehead was dotted just like Toru's neck. Junji Mitagawa had two bullet holes in his chest, one next to the other. Nanako Shizawa's skull was smashed. Fujiko Sasei looked like a doll whose limbs had been interchanged, sporting a bullet hole in her nape. Two blowdarts were jutting out of Toshiya Wakabayashi's neck. Minami Shimada was shot in the chest and that area of her blouse was also brown. Kazuhiko Yamatani sported a bullet hole in his stomach.  
  
Sakura stood back in shock, gasping. They were all dead?! Masao sat quietly, listening to a black market American punk CD. Shizuka brushed back her hair, then went back to reading her dog-eared illegally translated copy of "1984" (banned in Japan, of course). Junko was probably writing a note to Shizuka at her desk. Suzuko had her feet up on her desk and she was filing her nails. Kiyoharu also had his feet up on his desk and was also listening to a black market CD (probably The Clash, which was his favorite band ever). And finally, Shojiro was quiet. Too quiet. He produced from his bookbag a Thermos, twisted it open and poured the cup part full of green tea.   
  
"Hey, Sakura," he said, offering Sakura the tea. Sakura stepped back from Shojiro and tried to run out of the classroom, but found the doors were shut. She turned back to the class and found herself staring down Masao's nunchaku, Shizuka's Uzi, Junko's axe, Suzuko's mace, Kiyoharu's pistol and Shojiro's machine gun (as well as the tea).   
  
"Hey, Sakura," the six of them said in unison. "We're going to kill you."  
  
"No!!" Sakura screamed, trying to open the door in vain. She heard the sound of six chairs being pushed back and the thumping sounds of six pairs of feet heading towards her. "Noooooo!!!!" she screamed again, then she heard that horrid rat-tat-tat sound...  
  
Then she woke up.  
  
She was still asleep on that itchy old couch. She was panting for air, she was sweating and her heart was beating in her throat. She looked around, wishing that she was back at home.  
  
"Hey, Sakura, are you all right?" Shojiro asked.  
  
"Um...yeah...I suppose I am. I had a bad dream." Sakura wiped her forehead. "But I'm all right now."   
  
"I made some lunch, would you like some?" He was luring her into his trap.   
  
"Yeah! I'm really hungry!"  
  
"Great. You don't mind just plain cold sandwiches, do you?" Shojiro stood up and made sure that little test tube was still in the hidden pocket of his school coat, where he also kept his switchblade. He felt the cold glass and made for the corner where he had two peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on two paper plates. He opened up the test tube, carefully poured the cyanide tablet into his hand and precisely pulled it open, then putting it all in the peanut butter of one of the sandwiches. Then he folded back some of the plate to distinguish it from the other one and brought them to Sakura, handing her the one with the folded plate. She thanked him quietly and bit into the sandwich. Shojiro watched, intrigued, to see how fast-acting the cyanide was. Sakura was eating the sandwich as if it was the first thing she had in a long time, like weeks, quickly finishing it off. She swallowed the last bite and noticed Shojiro had only touched his sandwich once.   
  
"What did you do to it?" Sakura asked, panicking.  
  
"Oh, nothing," Shojiro replied. He smiled deviously as Sakura made a horrible choking sound, then she went for her neck to show she was choking.  
  
"Shojiro..." she sputtered. "Help..."  
  
"No can do."  
  
"I--I'm dying--Shojiro--I l-loved you..." Sakura coughed a huge hacking cough, then her eyes rolled back into her head and she slumped back onto the couch, lifeless.  
  
"Sorry, Sakura, unlike you, I wasn't born with the need for such cumbersome emotions as love. While I'll admit you were pretty...and a good fuck, too...there was no love in that relationship. Never was, and obviously never will be." Shojiro sighed and kept on eating his sandwich, every so often casting a glance at the dead Sakura.  
  
6 students remaining  
  
46  
  
Shizuka checked her watch. It was 8:35am. She looked out the window, still raining and gray and cold, of course. She looked over at Masao.  
  
"What are you doing?"   
  
"I'm messing with that Palm Pilot thing Kiyoharu got." Masao wielded a small black stylus and was drawing on the screen. "It shows the location of everyone, but the only flaws are that..."  
  
"I know what the flaws are," Shizuka said, interrupting. "Oh, sorry, I interrupted you."  
  
"No, it's all right, Kiyoharu explained it some time ago." Masao fiddled around with the options on the Palm Pilot. "I'm trying to get it to filter out dead people."  
  
"Hand it to me," Shizuka commanded.  
  
"What'll you do?"  
  
"I can do this stuff. If I knew more about these damn collars..." She tugged on her collar, which hurt. "Then I could disable them, I'd disable all of ours and swim back to Kobe." She sat down by Masao and took over the Palm Pilot. "Right here, asshat, all you have to do is enter a 3-number password. That's TOO easy. You just know the password's written on the back of the goddamn thing." She turned it over and looked. There was a barcode and a 9-digit serial number, 345-762-190, then a small peach chrysanthemum, the official government logo. "We'll just try 345 first." Shizuka keyed in 345 and got an error. "Now we'll try 762." Another error. "Now we'll try 190." Yet another error. "Now for a scrambled version...like 534." She tried many different combinations, becoming increasingly angered at the machine for not cooperating with her. Finally the right password was found with 019. "Okay, here's who's left. There are four stars concentrated in the same building. That's us. Up there by the cliff is a lonely star, as well as one above this building. That's the tourist association, right?" Masao nodded. "All right, the only two risks are those two. If you want to try to find out who they are, be my guest." Shizuka handed the Palm Pilot back to Masao and lay down on the loveseat she was sitting on.  
  
"Look what I found!" Junko shouted cheerfully, returning from the kitchen with a set of large butcher knives and a small pistol. "This, the pistol, was with these, the knives. Someone's ready for an intruder, huh?" She placed the newfound weapons in her day pack. "Hey, where's Kiyoharu?"  
  
"Yeah, where'd he go to?" Masao asked, looking around. Shizuka, automatically assuming the worst, rose from her loveseat and began to run into each room, looking for Kiyoharu. She found an open door and looked inside, finding a set of dusty stairs. She looked up, then drew her gun and silently climbed the stairs. The stairs opened up into an enclosed sunroom of sorts, plastic sheets protecting the room from the rain. Kiyoharu was there, spread out across two chairs, headphones on. Shizuka whirled around, holding out her gun, then pocketed it once more and tapped on her own ears. Kiyoharu reached inside his school coat and then took off his headphones.  
  
"What are you doing up here? You could get killed!" Shizuka scolded like a mother would to her child.   
  
"I just wanted some quiet."  
  
"I don't want you to want quiet, quiet will get you killed! Come back down here with us. At least then I'll know you're alive." Shizuka noticed that Kiyoharu looked shocked. "Oh...did I...shock you? I'm sorry. I just...want to know where you are, that's all." Oh dammit, here comes those tears again. "Or...at least I could stay up here and we could die together. We're going to die sooner or later anyway, right?"  
  
"Don't say that, Shizuka," Kiyoharu said comfortingly, standing up from his chairs and walking over to Shizuka. "It's all going to be all right. I'm here." He held Shizuka and ran a hand through her somewhat tangled (from sleep) hair. "I'm sorry I scared you, I'll come back downstairs right now. I just wanted some quiet to listen to a CD."  
  
"You brought your CD player?" Sniffle.   
  
"Of course! You honestly think I'd pack it and all of my illegal CDs in a suitcase that could be searched by the school? That's utter blasphemy." Kiyoharu put the headphones in one of the pockets of his school coat.   
  
"I don't know why I asked that." Shizuka pulled away and unbuttoned her own school coat. She had a secret pocket sewn in and dug around in that pocket, then removed her copy of "1984". "I brought 1984. You know...just in case we weren't actually playing fatal musical chairs on this trip. What were you listening to?"  
  
"The Clash's London Calling. It's a great album....it transcends words. Joe Strummer was a genius."  
  
"When we get out of here...will you tell me more about what you listen to?"  
  
"Of course I will." Kiyoharu smiled and took Shizuka's hand in his own. "Come on, let's go downstairs. Masao and Junko are probably worried sick."   
  
6 students remaining  
  
47  
  
Suzuko was alone. For once in her life, she was completely alone. Nothing but the wind, sea and rain to talk to, and none of those three were very good conversationalists. She had literally killed everyone she'd seen since the early morning. Was there anyone left? Was she the winner? 'No,' she thought, looking around. 'It can't be. If I was the winner, wouldn't they tell me? Or at least disable the forbidden zones or something?' She looked around. 'Is there even anyone still left on this island? It seems almost pointless to ask.' Taking up her mace once more, she left the northern shore to go look around, making sure to X out all the forbidden zones she knew of so far on her map so she wouldn't wander into any of them by mistake. 'No, Suzuko, don't go left, you'll get your head blown off and you won't even be the winner. Obviously there are still a few more people to lay rest to, or else there would be some kind of signal as to my winning. I guess I've just got to go hunt down everyone that's still alive.'  
  
She set off for the south, all alone.   
  
6 students remaining  
  
48  
  
Shojiro stared at Sakura's corpse for about an hour. It was all he could do. Without any electricity there was no way to watch TV or go on the Greater East Asia Intranet, which was the Republic's shitty excuse for the Internet. Of course, anything American was blocked (although there were, of course, ways to get around that), which pissed off every kid born in the 80s who knew there was something else out there but the only glances into the culture of that somewhere else were the grainy cheaply bootlegged CDs and books that the black market was swarming with.  
  
He recollected memories of times gone by instead. Most of them involved Sakura, whose corpse was still sitting before him. He remembered walking down the main streets of Kobe, surrounded by Toru, Daisuke, Junji, Akito, Tetsuko and Sakura. Even though they were still dressed in their school uniforms, they were feared and revered by most Kobe junior high students and even a few high school students, too, which was a definite accomplishment. Usually if it was a Friday night, they were going to alley fights against rival gang members. The seven of them would stand all in a row, whatever weapons they had held out for all to see. It was unfair to pit someone with a gun against someone with only their bare hands, so any unmatched fighters were ushered off to the side. The whole proceedings went on kind of like the samurai battles of old times, with a lot of dramatic circling around one another, weapons out, ready to strike but never knowing when. Every so often, one or the other would lash out. The other one would either dodge or sustain injuries. This would go on until they were finished or someone was in the hospital.   
  
The gang girls, and every gang had them, would sit on the sidelines with one another and chat, always ready to jump in and defend any of the gang boys from their respective gangs. Dating or bedding guys from different gangs was frowned upon (author: just like in West Side Story, but I digress...), although the girls did chat endlessly about whom they thought was cute and who wasn't. Sometimes, the gangs would do more normal things like see a movie, but most of the gang members were sworn enemies with the type who hung out at the mall.  
  
'What was that line from that song? "Kills the people he once saved." It all seems so oddly true now. How many times did I save, for example, Mitagawa's ass? And how did he repay me? By doing all my dirty work, of course. Didn't even have to sully my hands in those vulgar activities." Shojiro snorted and smiled, then looked over Sakura's corpse once more. 'Wonder where her pistol is. I could use another weapon.' Then he got up and began to paw around in Sakura's day pack.  
  
6 students remaining  
  
49  
  
"It's 11:55 am on Saturday, November 22, 2003. I'm going to leave this diary in a conspicuous place so if I die someone could publish it and I could be famous...but also dead." Junko scribbled in her diary, which was just a plain notebook. "I'm part of the Program for Kitagawa Jr. High School, Kobe, Japan. What is the Program, you might ask? It is a government-sanctioned program wherein a class of students is marooned somewhere and told to kill each other." Junko chewed on her pencil. "That's the basic gist of it. Right now we are waiting for the noontime announcements to tell us who's died since the last announcements. At last announcements, all but eight people were dead. This game is so fucking crazy. If it hasn't already been outlawed by the time someone gets this manuscript, will someone please pass legislation to make it illegal? Our birth rate is declining rapidly because of it. Soon we'll have no 15-year-olds left in this country at all." Junko tentatively closed her notebook and stared at the ceiling.  
  
"Suspense is boring, isn't it?" asked Shizuka from behind 1984. To this she got silent nods of agreement. Why doesn't that crazy bastard Toyama tell us what we need to know when it happens?"  
  
"Life isn't that convenient," Masao replied, waving his nunchaku around, bored. Kiyoharu opened a window so they could hear the announcements better and then the shrill beeping noise echoed over the mostly empty island.   
  
"Hi everyone! Well, it's noon on Saturday, how is everyone? Mostly dead, but I digress. Here are the forbidden zones, and I'm going to give an extra one because I feel nice right now. At 1 pm, A-7; at 3 pm, F-6; at 5 pm, I-6 and at 7 pm, D-8. All right, now for the part you've all been waiting for...the deaths! Well, only girls have died since 6 am, and those two girls are No. 11 Asuka Nishima and No. 15 Sakura Yanagi, bringing the living student population to a whopping six people. You guys are doing well, and it's the final stretch of the game, fight as hard as you can!"   
  
Shizuka screamed and threw down her book in rage (marking her page first, of course).  
  
"GODDAMN ASSHOLE!" she screamed, glaring at the direction she suspected the broadcast to come from. "There's only six of us left and he's praising us?! Oh MAN does he make me sick!" Shizuka went off on a tangent, making sure to damn everyone in the government, but especially Toyama, to hell.   
  
"Uh-oh, Shizuka's enraged again..." Junko commented, sighing a little.   
  
6 students remaining 


	8. Part Eight

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Eight  
  
50  
  
Suzuko barely missed the deadline to get the hell out of square B-7, but managed to make it just seconds before her head would've exploded. She found that there were no forbidden zones in the area she was in for a long while, not until the school (which she could barely see from where she was) or the residential zone (and besides, the other five people left wouldn't be hiding there). She paused by some tangerine trees to regain her breath and footing, then continued on her journey. She could go west all the way to the squares right before the coast, stopping at the hill (which was just labeled 'hill' on her map, great descriptive skills), the house with a well, the farmhouse, the southern mountain and the coast. Or she could go east to the tourist association and the clinic. Of course, she didn't have any fancy-schmancy people locator like Kiyoharu did, so she relied on her good judgement...  
  
...and picked west.  
  
But not before stealing a tangerine and checking to see if it was maggot-free before eating it, of course. By now she didn't care about scurvy or whatever disease someone could get from eating old fruit as long as it was food, glorious food. She tore off a slice of the tangerine and shoved it in her mouth. The juices tasted like heavenly ambrosia. She was satisfied.  
  
She also wanted to try to get the blood out of her hair. Oh well, that would have to wait.  
  
6 students remaining  
  
51  
  
It was obvious that Sakura wouldn't be doing anything anytime soon...or ever, so eventually Shojiro tired of sitting there. He poured the contents of Sakura's day pack into his own, then stood up to leave, casting one last glance at Sakura as he shut the door behind him. He found himself under an awning, the rain falling around him and making large, muddy puddles on the ground. He didn't exactly relish walking through these puddles but did anyway. Instead of going south, which he already had explored, he decided to go west. He only remembered seeing the Shinto shrine and wished to see more of whatever lay out west in Okishima. So he rearranged the pack on his shoulder, made sure his machine gun was right where he left it and set off to the west. He heard loud slurping, munching and smacking sounds in the distance and went into prowling mode, trying to be as silent as possible. Who was that making those loud noises? He got closer.  
  
'Oh, it's Harada. One of the goody-goodies. Wonder where her little goody-goody crew is now? They're all dead. All of them except her. But who killed them?' Shojiro kept his finger on the trigger as he rose out of the bushes and startled Suzuko, who was just trying to enjoy some tangerine. She gulped down half of a slice of tangerine and turned to face Shojiro.  
  
'Oh shit...the only person in class 3-A I honestly fear is right before me,' her good girl side spoke.  
  
'Why don't you fucking gut him?' her bad girl side suggested.  
  
'Because he'll gut me first! I want to win!'  
  
'You'll win faster by eliminating him!'   
  
'I don't want to die at his hand!' Suzuko whirled back around, dropping her tangerine and beginning to run. Shojiro ran after her, knowing she was headed for the general store/clinic.   
  
'Why does everyone keep going there?! Maybe they think there are still knives left there. Well, because there are knives left there,' Shojiro thought as he chased after Suzuko, whose braids whipped around, sometimes making visibility difficult for him. At one point, one of her braids whipped him right in the face, which slowed him down for a moment. He regained footing and continued running after Suzuko, through underbrush, over roots and leaping around thorn bushes. Finally Suzuko looked behind herself to see how far away he was and slammed into the side of the general store. It only hurt a little. She turned back towards Shojiro and took out every weapon she had, which was the mace, the blowdarts, the throwing stars, the whip, the sword, the quill knives, the shotgun and the grenades.   
  
"I'm going to fucking kill you," she hissed at Shojiro, then began to aimlessly throw the blowdarts. Shojiro actually caught one in his hand (!) and the others flew off in different directions due to the wind. Suzuko growled and drew her whip.  
  
"Dance," she commanded Shojiro, whipping the ground below his feet.  
  
"How about you dance?" Shojiro asked in reply, drawing his machine gun and shooting. Suzuko's body flailed around wildly in the air like she actually was doing some kind of dance. Once Shojiro was done pumping her full of bullets, he lowered the gun and watched her body collapse on the ground. "You honestly thought you could defeat me. Maybe for a second there you actually believed it. That was called hope, but didn't you realize you had no hope when I saw you? Silly girl. Never thought anything through." He knelt and stole the entire bounty of weapons from right under Suzuko's feet.  
  
And with that, Suzuko Harada, who killed four girls in less than a day, was dead.  
  
5 students remaining  
  
52  
  
Anxiety and tension were building inside the clinic. The four heard gunshots a short while ago, so they hid, hoping that no shadows or silhouettes were showing through any windows. Shizuka wasn't used to hearing gunshots still, so she was in shock for a while after hearing so many of them ring out. She'd sit in a corner, shaking, hands over her ears, no way to convince her it was okay. Every so often she would whimper something very quietly and didn't respond to Kiyoharu touching her hand.  
  
"We'll...die..." she whimpered.  
  
"No, we won't," Kiyoharu replied. All right, so maybe the game wanted only one person to survive, but they'd find a way out. They had to. It was heartbreaking to see a girl reduced to her most primal fears by having to hear gunshots on a school trip. Masao checked the Palm Pilot and noticed one star was completely gone from the radar, meaning someone else was dead. They, of course, had no idea who died but they knew there were five people left on the island.  
  
"Five of us are left."   
  
"How much do you want to bet it's Umeboshi?" Junko asked, spitting to her side.  
  
"If I had any money, I'd bet it all," Shizuka replied quietly. "And it's about 2:00 pm, right?"  
  
"Right."  
  
"How long do you think it'll take for him to find us?" The other three paused as Shizuka stood up. "That's right, how long? Factor out the forbidden zones so far. How long will it take Shojiro to find us? What are we going to do when he inevitably finds us? We can't just run and scream, there's nobody else left for him to kill except us." She began to head for the kitchen. "There has to be a butcher knife or something in here."  
  
"Don't forget the various scalpels and needles that might be hiding in the clinic area!" Junko added cheerfully, standing up and going towards the clinic area.   
  
"Well, the girls are off arming themselves, I guess now all we can do is wait," Masao said, still looking at the Palm Pilot very intently.   
  
"Turn that off," Kiyoharu commanded. Masao looked at him like he was nuts. "Turn it off. If we sit here waiting for that thing to refresh, which only happens every fifteen minutes, then we'll spend the whole day waiting. I like the element of surprise." Kiyoharu gave Masao the eye of death until he turned off the Palm Pilot. "Much better. Now we just have to be prepared."  
  
5 students remaining  
  
53  
  
"What'd you get?" Junko asked, coming down the hall with a basket. There were no needles in the basket because they were exposed and would probably stick someone unintentionally instead of sticking into a target. She did, however, find scalpels of many fun sizes and crammed them all into the basket.  
  
"Same to you. I got a hold of their knife collection. Someone in this family liked to cook, as they left behind about ten different knives. Of course, I took all of them. It's better to have too much than to have too little, right?"   
  
"I got scalpels." Junko showed Shizuka the basket.  
  
"Excellent, can I put my knives in there too?" Junko nodded and Shizuka placed the ten knives in the basket.   
  
"So, what are we going to do now?" Shizuka asked as the girls began to walk back to the living room.  
  
"I don't know, I suppose the only thing we can do is wait." Shizuka paused and kept walking silently.  
  
"More tension?" Junko suggested.  
  
"I got enough tension in my little body to fill the entire country of Cambodia, that's tension." Shizuka noticed Junko seemed shocked when she said the little Cambodia comment. "I scared you."  
  
"Kind of...I'll get used to it eventually." Junko sighed, then looked at her watch. 2:15 pm. Her ears perked up upon hearing the beep and the crackling sound. "What? It's four hours too early for this!"   
  
"Hi, everyone, it's Mr. Toyama. I decided to do this a bit early. I'm going to clump all the forbidden zones into this bulletin, so watch out. All right, at 1 pm, A-7; at 3 pm, F-6; at 5 pm, F-5; at 7 pm, D-2; at 9 pm, C-3 and at 11 pm, H-1. There are two deaths to report. First, Female Student No. 6, Suzuko Harada, and Female Student No. 15, Sakura Yanagi. By my count that means five of you are left. Congratulations, Suzuki, Moritaka, Umeboshi, Arai and Mizuboshi for making it this far in the game. Remember, if nobody else has died before 11 pm, the collars will detonate." The girls' faces both went pale.  
  
"We're in the top five?" Shizuka asked in disbelief.   
  
"Unbelievable," Junko replied, almost dropping the basket full of knives. Shizuka had to save it in midair as Junko's jaw dropped, too.   
  
"And I actually expected myself to be one of the first to die," Shizuka muttered, trying to brush that off with a low-voiced 'heh'.   
  
"But the first to die was Hanagata, he's probably still at the school, rotting in the classroom." Junko paused, biting her lip. Lip biting was a very bad habit of hers and during the course of this Program she chewed about five scabs into her lip which she kept reopening periodically. One of the scabs was reopened and began to bleed. "What do you think?"  
  
"I think that we kill Shojiro when he comes, then figure out something. I'm pretty good with machines, there has to be a way to deactivate those collars."  
  
5 students remaining  
  
54  
  
"And the truth shall set you free," Mr. Toyama muttered, puffing on an expensive Cuban cigar. He blew out rings of smoke around a TV screen labeled "F1", which showed Shizuka's POV if you put a camera around her neck. "Oh, how I wish to tell you that I can see you and hear everything you're saying." He blew another ring onto the screens labeled M10 and M15. "It's too bad Kaoru and Kazuhiko died before they learned that I severed their Internet connection. That Sengakuji was pretty damn talented. He thwarted all our firewalls and even made a very irritating virus for us. It's not fun when 'The Star-Spangled Banner' plays every time you try to do anything. But who's laughing last? You're dead and I'm not." More tendrils of smoke swirled into the air from the lit end of the cigar. "As well as...hm...25 in total classmates? How unfortunate." Mr. Toyama moved his chair over to the TV labeled M13 and began to watch intently. "Tatsumichi?"  
  
"Yes sir?" A soldier dressed in the military uniform stood at attention.  
  
"Can you give me the coordinates of M13?"  
  
"Yes sir." Tatsumichi turned to another computer, typed in a few lines of code and some coordinates popped up. "M13 is currently in square C-7, atop the northern mountain, sir."  
  
"Ah, so that's what that blurry thing was." Mr. Toyama turned back to the screen and nodded. "Hey, Tatsumichi?"  
  
"Yes sir?"  
  
"Who did you bet on, if I may ask?"  
  
"Well, sir, I actually bet on Yanagi."  
  
"Yanagi. Oh, it's too bad she's dead, huh? Tell you what. If Umeboshi wins, I'll give you a cut of my winnings." He grinned and sent more smoke rings into the air.  
  
"You would do that, sir?"  
  
"Of course I would, Tatsumichi, you're one of my favorites."  
  
"Well, um, uh, thank you, sir."  
  
"Not a problem. Now come over here and let's watch this little drama unfold, shall we?" Tatsumichi nodded obediently and brought a chair over to sit next to Toyama.   
  
5 students remaining  
  
55  
  
"What are you doing?" Shizuka asked as she looked at her collar in a mirror. The other three were sprawled out behind her.  
  
"We're reminiscing on the good times," Kiyoharu replied miserably.  
  
"Hm," she replied, poking at the small red circle in the middle of her collar covered by a piece of red plexiglas. "How was life?" she asked as if seeing an old friend from high school for the first time in ten years.   
  
"It was pretty good," Junko replied.  
  
"It was okay," Masao replied.  
  
"It was bad," Kiyoharu replied.  
  
"Bad?" Shizuka asked, tapping the red plexiglas a few times. "Bad? You think you had it bad?" She whirled around from looking at the mirror and began to frantically unbutton her school coat. "Let me show you how bad it can get." She tossed her school coat, discarded, onto the floor and began to unbutton the white blouse underneath. "You'll see more if I do this," she said before Kiyoharu could say a thing, then she shimmied out of the blouse. "Look at this! Look at how bad it can get. Look at me, because of my careless stepfather my body is ruined forever! As well as my emotions! I'm afraid that someday I'll turn out to be a sucker just like my mother and the man I marry will abuse my children! I don't want that! I just wish I could go back to being a normal fourteen-year-old schoolgirl. But before that, I wish I could wear girls' uniforms. Sure, I don't have a good body or anything but if it wasn't completely covered in scars, I would be able to wear those cute uniforms! You have no idea! Whenever I see girls on the streets in Kobe, I get a little pang right here--" she pointed to her heart--"and wish that I could be in those. But no! Because of that asshole Arimachi, I'll never be able to wear those adorable skirts and sailor-style blouses! Oh, and not only that." She removed a wrist cuff she was wearing and exposed a few very deep scars. "I inflicted these on myself. Junko. Remember that one time when I called at 1 in the morning and told you over the phone that I was taking a box cutter to my arm? I did! And I ended up in the hospital because of it. All that Arimachi told me was that I needed some medicine because I was a 'fucked-up child', his words, not mine. My mom asked me what happened and I told her. I told her the whole truth. EVERYTHING. Even the fact that he'd completely ruined my body. I thank God he didn't decide to rape me too and just have it all over and done with. Right before I left for the 'school trip', my mom told me that she was going to get him into jail no matter what it took. I want them to kill him. I want them to kill him for everything he did to me. I never wanted her to marry him. I want my dad back. I want my old life back." She put her blouse back on, then wiped her eyes on the sleeves and began to put her school coat back on. "There you go. How much worse can you get?" She was fully aware that she was crying again and she didn't care. She saw the looks of utter shock reflected on Masao, Junko and Kiyoharu's faces. "Junko knew most of this story already. You two didn't. Now you do. Now if you excuse me I think I'll go jump off the roof." She smiled and began to head for the stairs up to the sunroom. The three exchanged glances, then all began to stand up to chase after her.   
  
5 students remaining 


	9. Part Nine

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Nine  
  
56  
  
Shizuka was looking around for some way to unzip the clear plastic keeping her from meeting the ground in a most unpleasant way. Her search was, unfortunately for her, very fruitless. She was about to shoot holes in the clear plastic when she heard the door opening again and turned, gun ready, to see Kiyoharu, Junko and Masao entering the sunroom.   
  
"Shizuka..." Junko said in her coaxing voice. "Put it down. It's going to be all right."  
  
"What if I go home and he's still there?" Shizuka asked, her voice becoming low and threatening. It was truly horrifying. "That's a possibility! What if I don't go home at all?"  
  
"Please, Shizuka," Kiyoharu begged. "Put it down." Shizuka looked at Kiyoharu and her glare softened. She dropped her gun and found herself walking over to him without even knowing she was moving. Junko looked at Masao and mouthed 'It worked' as Shizuka stood before Kiyoharu.  
  
"I promise one day I'll stop," Shizuka whispered as she fumbled around in her school coat and took out a box cutter. "It won't be today, though." She brought out the blade of the box cutter and grinned as she brought it down into the pale flesh of her arm.   
  
"Shizuka!!" Junko wailed, waving her gun around. "Don't!!" Kiyoharu tried to wrestle the box cutter out of Shizuka's hand and called on Masao for assistance. Using a move he learned in karate, he pinched a nerve in Shizuka's neck. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she let go of the box cutter as she dropped onto the ground. Junko gasped.  
  
"Did you kill her?" Kiyoharu asked Masao.  
  
"No, I just knocked her out for a while." Junko let out a deep breath of relief.  
  
"How long?"  
  
"I think an hour or so. Not too long."  
  
"You asshole! What if Shojiro comes before she comes to? We have one less fighter! Is there a way to reverse that?" Kiyoharu was obviously angered.  
  
"If he comes before she comes to, which is highly unlikely, we'll just cover for her until she comes back to. Enough said."   
  
"You make it all sound so easy," Kiyoharu hissed as he sat down next to Shizuka. "I'm staying with her. I'm guarding her."   
  
"Fine by me, but..." Junko looked off in the distance. "Let's move back into the house. Can you carry her alone?"  
  
"I already have before," Kiyoharu replied, smiling wearily and picking up Shizuka. "She feels like a rag doll," he noted as he descended the stairs. Junko slapped Masao across the face.  
  
"Agh! Why did you do that?" Masao asked, rubbing his cheek.  
  
"You were supposed to get the cutter out of her hand, not knock her out! Who do you think you are, acting so big?" She scowled at him. "Just think about what you did. I'm going downstairs." Junko began to go down the stairs and turned around to scowl once more before going all the way down and shutting the door, leaving Masao alone with his thoughts and a throbbing cheek.  
  
5 students remaining  
  
57  
  
Shojiro stood atop the northern mountain, along with Miki's brutalized corpse. He tried to ignore that as he tried to focus the old binoculars in, looking for signs of life. Anything that moved, he would focus on. This meant he mistakenly focused on animals going to corpses for a bit of a snack many times, but when at first you don't succeed, just try again. He saw something moving and focused in...only to find some birds picking at Sayaka Ichiki's corpse, looking for food. Dammit. Another failed attempt. He turned the binoculars to the right just a little and was focused on the school. He could see Shinya Misao's body on the roof, one well-placed shot fired at him so long ago. He moved them down and saw a raccoon tearing a piece of meat off of Minami Shimada. He sighed and turned them right even more, moving past the residential area until he saw something at the clinic. Focusing in, he saw an exchange between Junko Mizuboshi and Masao Suzuki which began in Junko bitch-slapping Masao.   
  
Shojiro licked his lips. Those two still seemed alive, which meant only one thing.  
  
He had to kill them, of course. He had one of the best arsenals in the game, stealing from everyone he killed. He was the best player in the game, of course, and he was going to go show those two how this game was played. He jumped out of the viewing platform and began to slide down the mountain just as Suzuko had done long ago. Of course he had no idea that Suzuko slid down the mountain, too, it's just that his shoes had almost no traction against slippery rock, so he decided to just let the friction, gravity and all that other science stuff he slept through do its trick.   
  
He'd get there when he'd get there.  
  
5 students remaining  
  
58  
  
It was about to be 3:00. Kiyoharu eyed his watch, then eyed Shizuka, then eyed his watch again, the second time very nervously. About an hour ago, Masao promised Kiyoharu that Shizuka would only be unconscious for an hour. Can consciousness be induced? He began to wonder. But no, he couldn't leave Shizuka's side. What ifs flashed through his head. What if Shojiro broke in through the very window he was sitting at while he was out of the room getting a medical book? What if he killed off Junko and Masao, then came after poor defenseless Shizuka? Kiyoharu cursed Masao for doing this, then sighed and looked at her again. A small red line was on her right arm, dripping a small stream of blood down her wrist and onto the bed he put her on. He eyed the line nervously, then decided to just go for it. Luckily the supplies he needed were right across the hall, so he simply ran out of the room and returned with the supplies needed to dress a wound. Not a hair on Shizuka's head was harmed.   
  
Kiyoharu sighed and began to clean up the red line with rubbing alcohol. Last time, when she was conscious, this hurt her a bit which she showed by muttering 'It stings...'. This time she was unconscious but he wanted her to be conscious again. He wrapped the wound in gauze and taped it tightly to help clot the blood.   
  
"You know," a feeble female voice said while Kiyoharu observed his handiwork. "For not having 'any' experience in the medical field, you're a pretty good doctor." Shizuka opened her eyes slowly.   
  
"Are you all right?" Kiyoharu asked.  
  
"I'm a little dazed, but otherwise fine. But let me tell you, if anyone tries that neck pinch thing on me again I may be forced to castrate them. ...If they're male, of course." Shizuka smiled. "Oh, I was just kidding. What time is it?"  
  
"3:00 on the dot. Masao predicted your unconsciousness time pretty well."   
  
"Do you know how many kids are left?"  
  
"Still five. We're still good to go. How are you feeling?"  
  
"Just a bit dazed, like I said, but if Shojiro came bursting in at this very moment, I would fight for my life." She patted her school coat. Yup, her issued gun was still there. As she touched the warm black metal she remembered the only killing shot she'd fired throughout this whole game and that was to kill Shinya Misao, who would probably have taken out the rest of the class after her anyway. Now that she thought about it, the plan was well thought-out and probably would've worked in that alternate reality that Shinya created for himself by pieceing together the plots of all the manga he read. Of course, this was the real reality and now...well, he wasn't alive anymore. Probably ascended to the big manga in heaven, right? Shizuka sat up and noticed the bloodied gauze on her right arm. "You bandaged me up?"  
  
"I figured, why not? You were losing a lot of blood. I read in this book that nothing good comes from not having enough blood." Kiyoharu motioned to the medical book, which was about the size of an American phone book.   
  
"Good advice." She looked around the room. "Um, I'm going to go show Masao and Junko that I'm okay."   
  
"I'm still mad at you," Junko said quietly to Masao.  
  
"I only did what I thought was right." He noticed that she was biting her lip again. "I agree, I am a bit headstrong at times and sometimes I forget that actions have consequences. Although..."  
  
"Although?"  
  
"Although when I was reflecting on my life I did remember some relevant stuff."  
  
"Really? Go ahead and tell me if it's relevant."  
  
"Okay. I remember in seventh grade when you first joined the cross-country team. So maybe you weren't the best runner? I wasn't the best kid in karate class. I'm still not. But anyway, one day Takashi came up to me after school right when I was going to go home and said, 'Hey, we can be a little late to karate class. I want you to come see this girl.' 'This girl?' I asked. I got my ass royally whooped by a yellow belt girl when I was a white belt, so I kind of don't have any good memories around girls. I reluctantly followed Takashi and we hid behind the wooden gate surrounding the field. We peeked through a loophole in the wood and I saw you. 'Look!' said Takashi, pointing right at you. 'That one! Number four! Mizuboshi. I think you two would work well together.' I didn't believe him and it took me two whole years to believe him."  
  
"So you like me?"  
  
"Yes, you got it."  
  
"Then why didn't you save me the anecdote and just tell me straightforward?"  
  
"I'm not like that." Shizuka stepped in the room, then looked inside and saw the two getting friendly. She gasped, embarrassed, and immediately threw herself up against the nearest wall. She was a bit of an eavesdropper.  
  
5 students remaining  
  
59  
  
Shojiro repeated the same little mantra in his head as he descended the mountain. 'The clinic. The clinic. The clinic.' Over and over. He made sure he still had his machine gun strapped on his shoulder as he ran in the muddy, swampy grounds towards the clinic in the rain, not able to see very well in front of him with the rain hitting his eyes and stinging. Then he paused under the welcoming branches of a Japanese pine tree to check his map and make sure he was actually going in the right direction and wouldn't run into any forbidden zones. He traced a path with his finger, deftly avoiding any forbidden zones, and slapped the map when his finger traced all the way to the clinic without running into forbidden zones. Successful mission. But wasn't that the Umeboshi creed? His family always won. If they didn't, they would wag yen bills at whomever was judging. So bribery was illegal? Whatever, as long as it let him win.  
  
He began to follow his path down to the clinic once more, noting that it wouldn't be too long until he got there. He sloshed through the wet, muddy grass once more, getting mud all over his shoes and pants. This got him mad, because his shoes were rather expensive, but he would deal with that later, after slaying whomever was left in the game. He reloaded his gun with a new magazine, looking over it and continuing once more.   
  
He began to enjoy the scent of blood over this trip. Was there a blood-scented cologne or perfume? They could honestly bottle one and he would buy it. What would they call it, though? How about...Umeboshi Special. Yeah. He liked that name. So what if he was egotistical?  
  
5 students remaining  
  
60  
  
"It'd really be quite easy to disable these collars," Masao wrote on a piece of paper. By now he had a clue that Mr. Toyama could most likely hear what he was saying, so he moved a conversation onto paper. "I think I read a scrambled manual how to on the Internet."  
  
"The real Internet?" Shizuka replied.  
  
"The real one. I took the liberty of stealing the batteries out of Kiyoharu's Walkman, we could need them. I don't have the manual on me, but I do remember it."  
  
"I don't want to die from a faulty hacking of a collar."  
  
"I know you don't. But in the manual it mentioned that this disabling process worked on all of the testing group. What we have to do is..." Masao began to write a bunch of very technical phrases, many of which Shizuka didn't understand. "Don't understand? Don't worry. I'll do all the work."  
  
"PLEASE DON'T KILL ME" Shizuka begged in huge kanji.  
  
"I won't kill you!" Masao replied. "All of the ingredients as well as a manual I wrote in simple language is in my coat pocket, in case I die just take the reins. They're all parts I took from a portable stereo. I even drew pictures. Just do what the pictures and words say and you can get out of here with no trouble."  
  
"Does it only work for one person?"  
  
"No, it works for multiple people. In theory all four of us could escape. See, when the collar is disabled it transmits a signal telling these master computers that its wearer died. So it could look like all four of us died in a gun battle with Shojiro or something, although we could be heading up the north coast and getting the hell out of here. It's easy, isn't it?"  
  
"And you got it all off of the Internet! Look what we're missing by having a dictatorship government!"   
  
Then Shizuka heard a knock on the door. The color drained from her face. She quickly went for her basket of knives and her gun.   
  
"Who should answer the door?" she whispered, slipping the paper into a pants pocket.   
  
"Nobody," Masao replied. "We'll wait for him to open it." Junko and Kiyoharu came in closer to Masao and Shizuka so they formed a clump instead of four defined people, weapons ready. They heard the sound of a body rushing up to the door and the cracking sounds made by the door as it surrendered to force. This cracking went on for a few minutes until there was a definite banging noise as the defeated door fell to the floor.  
  
Shojiro Umeboshi stepped into the clinic, machine gun drawn, ready to spill some blood.  
  
5 students remaining 


	10. Part Ten

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Ten  
  
61  
  
He walked down the hall, looking in every room, the mud on his shoes squashing against the clean white floor and leaving footprints a mother would be furious about. He looked in every room, finding them all empty, until he came upon the room in the very back, where the four were huddled. He raised his gun.  
  
"Stop!" Shizuka shouted, standing up and putting her arms out to the sides as if to shield everyone else. "We've got valuable information about disabling these collars! I know you want it!"  
  
"What are you doing?" Masao asked under his breath.  
  
"Being smart!" Shizuka screamed as she drew the butcher knife from the folds of her coat and slashed blindly, feeling the unmistakeable resistance of clothing and skin against the blade. She couldn't stand someone else getting hurt. Sure, she was able to look at herself while she mutilated herself (or had herself mutilated by someone else), but if it was someone else getting hurt, she didn't want to see it. What she didn't see was, while she was blindly slashing, the fact that Masao grabbed Shojiro's wrist and twisted it until he dropped his machine gun on the ground. Junko grabbed it up but had it forced from her hand when Shojiro took out his whip and slapped it against her wrist. He got up, nursing his hurt wrist, and used the whip to bring the gun back to his hand, holding it ready once more. Junko tried a money shot and threw one of the scalpels, hoping that the blade would lodge in his skin somewhere, but it clattered onto the ground instead. Shizuka became discouraged from trying to throw her knives and instead began to formulate plans for different combat tactics...  
  
...right as a scream rang out. "DUCK!!" And she obeyed right as one of the throwing stars whizzed over her head and stuck in the wall behind her. She got up and dodged to the right to avoid another star, then jumped left to avoid the third one. A jump in the air made the fourth miss and another duck to the ground made the last one miss. Shojiro cursed the person who thought up these weapons for being so weird, then took out the blowdarts. There were only two left. He shot these at Kiyoharu, who ducked both of them.  
  
"Who throws darts? Honestly," he replied, standing up and rolling his eyes right as Shojiro reinstated the whip and slapped Kiyoharu in the stomach with it. This caused Kiyoharu to kneel on his knees and grab his stomach in pain.  
  
"Bastard!!!" Shizuka screamed, drawing a steak knife and heading right for the neck. Instead of slashing that very tempting Adam's apple, her aim hit slightly below his throat, ripping open his school coat, white shirt and some of his skin. Obviously this cut began to bleed profusely. Shizuka helped Kiyoharu to his feet and made sure he was okay before she tried to fight any more. Junko flung another scalpel and this time it lodged in Shojiro's left cheek. He quickly pulled it out, which caused a fountain of blood to spurt from that cut as well.   
  
"Can't you see you're mismatched, four to one?" Junko asked as Shojiro discarded the scalpel with his blood on the blade.  
  
"More like three to one." Shojiro held a few quill knives in his sleeve, then he took those out and shot them at Masao, one after the other. Masao was able to dodge the first few, but the last few stuck. One stuck in his chest, one in his arm, one in his other arm and one...  
  
...in his jugular.  
  
"No..." Junko whispered in disbelief. "No. It's not true." She knelt next to Masao. "I'll take out the blades. We'll be okay." Of course, neither Junko nor Masao knew that Kanako Niimura died in exactly the same way. A knife to the neck, now that was pretty damn hard to survive. "Please tell me it's not true."  
  
"Don't remove it, it'll hurt me more. Just let me die."  
  
"I can't do that, Masao."  
  
"I'm sorry, Junko. I can't hold on much longer. I just wanted to die right here, with you right here." His hand reached up to touch Junko's face. She was trembling wildly, almost in hysterics. Her breaths came in labored gasps. "Just remember all the good...times...we had together, okay? Go on and grow up, be successful, be happy. Do it all for the guy who slipped through the cracks." Junko touched Masao's chest, waiting for the gentle heaving of normal breath to occur. Her jaw dropped in disbelief. How could he be dead?! Was it even possible? Her mind set on one thing: revenge. She took up one of the knives that missed and aimed carefully. She was also interested in archery, so she refined her aim in that club. She imagined the knife going exactly where she wanted it to and threw it, watching as it landed on the top part of Shojiro's right thigh. 'DAMMIT! I missed!' She stood up, respectfully looking down at Masao and closing his eyes.   
  
"Look at you! How many people did you kill throughout this game? Did you have any regrets? I've heard rumors that some nerve damage you sustained killed your ability to feel emotions. Is that true?"  
  
"It is true," Shojiro replied. Shizuka motioned to Kiyoharu to take up a small knife and literally backstab him while Shojiro and Junko talked about emotions. "I even killed Sakura without any regrets."  
  
"Sakura? Sakura loved you," Shizuka added.  
  
"Shut up, bitch. Was I talking to you?" Shojiro asked, pointing his gun at Shizuka. She followed by pointing her gun at him while Kiyoharu snuck up behind him but only managed to lop off a bit of his hair because he moved his gun back to Junko. "Anyway, do you want to follow Masao?"  
  
4 students remaining  
  
62  
  
"Of course not!" Shizuka answered, firing her gun. This began a horrible crossfire taking place between Shizuka and Shojiro, who were the only two of the four that had guns. Junko still had her axe, which should only be used when there was no way in hell Shojiro could avoid it, which obviously was not right now. Shojiro's rapid machine-gun fire made it hard to tell exactly where the shots were hitting. Shizuka dove behind a couch and waited until the couch became a large ball of pulverized foam, then dove behind the next one, and the next until she was out of couches to hide behind. Meanwhile Kiyoharu and Junko were throwing knives like nobody's business. Some of them hit, but only the few and far between actually stuck. Shizuka popped up from behind the couch and fired, then was met with two shots. One she dodged but the other grazed her left leg, stinging quite a lot. This angered her and she fired more, hitting his shoulders and arms.  
  
"WHY WON'T YOU DIE?!" she screamed in desperation as she fired until she was out. She loaded the other bullets, the only ones left, and spent those quickly as well. This was also Shojiro's last magazine and it was eventually spent, most of the shots landing in the walls. The whole room was smoking. Shojiro started to panic and looked in his day pack. That's right, he stole Sakura's katana! Right as he drew it, Kiyoharu rushed up behind him with a meat cleaver and slashed a huge gaping slit in Shojiro's back, then stood in front of him and began to piledrive him into the kitchen. Shizuka followed with her day pack in tow as Kiyoharu shoved Shojiro onto the table and began to punch him senseless. Junko came in a moment later also holding Masao's nunchaku and the two girls stood to the side, having no idea what to do. Kiyoharu was good at dodging Shojiro's hopeful katana slashes. Finally Shizuka's hand closed on something cold in her day pack and she took out...  
  
Minami Shimada's revolver! It had been in a secret pocket of the bag this whole time! Shizuka kicked herself for not finding it earlier, then felt the cold metal of the extra bullets also in that secret pocket. But she decided not to fire now, Shojiro and Kiyoharu were squirming too much so she could end up hitting Kiyoharu.   
  
Shojiro was bleeding profusely onto the white table and when he moved away from the puddle the girls noted that it resembled the Japanese flag. It seemed quite ironic to see a flag-like image in the blood of a fellow student, but the whole Program was a strange time for all. Shojiro tried to slash Kiyoharu's chest with the katana but he dodged and the blade grazed his side lightly, leaving a small cut.   
  
"I don't know if I can take this any longer," Shizuka whispered. "Kiyoharu's been unable to dodge a lot of sucker punches. Shojiro is a good fighter."  
  
"When you're one of the best yakuza kids in Kobe, what do you expect? He's not a quadriplegic, you know," Junko replied, adding in a good dose of sarcasm to lighten up the mood. Obviously it didn't work on Shizuka. Right then, Kiyoharu took a punch to his jaw and acted like it was nothing. Maybe the jaw wouldn't have to be reset? Shizuka didn't hear the sound of bones cracking. Finally she decided she couldn't take it anymore and ran up next to Kiyoharu, who spat into his hand, then looked and saw a tiny white tooth sitting in his palm, along with a large amount of blood.   
  
"Oh, that was a baby tooth anyway. I would've had to have it pulled. Thanks for saving me a lot of pain, Shojiro." Kiyoharu spat again and his saliva was pink, then he went back to relentlessly fighting Shojiro. Shizuka began to kick Shojiro in one area of his leg, then knelt down and carved the character for "love" into the bruised leg with one of her smaller knives. She stood back up, admiring her handiwork, then balled her hand into a fist like Masao taught her to. "Remember, Shizuka," he taught her one day after school when she inquired about self-defense (against her stepfather, of course). "If you punch with your knuckles, you risk breaking your hand. Punch with this part." Masao pointed to the part below the knuckles, the part where kids would write characters so their hands spelled out words. Shizuka made sure she was punching with the part below her knuckles, then delivered a punch up into Shojiro's chin which definitely broke something, as there was a sick crunching noise.  
  
"Don't fuck with Kiyoharu," Shizuka threatened, tossing back her hair. "'Cause you fuck with me, too."  
  
4 students remaining  
  
63  
  
"Fucking with a girl," Shojiro replied. "Ha, I feel so threatened...NOT!" He lifted his un-sliced foot up and began to kick Shizuka in the crotch, to which she laughed maniacally.  
  
"What are you kicking? I don't have balls!" she replied, grabbing his leg and forcing it back down. "I'm getting sick of fighting with this guy, let's just kill him." But not before she sustained a punch to her forehead, of course, with the force of a 130-pound 15-year-old yakuza boy behind it. "Owww..." She began to totter around on her legs unsteadily. Junko came in and began to beat Shojiro up with her nunchaku, slamming them over and over onto his rib cage, waiting for a rib to bruise or break. Shojiro wasn't looking so good. The pool of blood on the table told a tale of how badly he was losing, three to one. Now Shizuka was feeling dizzy and strange, like she'd never felt before. Shojiro took Junko's nunchaku up in his hand and began to beat her with them severely in the head, which got her feeling dizzy as well.   
  
"Get out the way," she commanded Kiyoharu and Junko, who huddled behind her for safety. Kiyoharu held Shizuka's arm steady with his hand and kissed her cheek as she shut her eyes and squeezed the trigger. She heard the unmistakeable sound of a bullet exiting its nice warm home inside the cylinder and cracked open one eye to see Shojiro's head fall into the pool of blood, then his body slid forward and slumped onto the ground. She cracked open the other eye.  
  
"Is he...?" Junko asked in shock. Shizuka couldn't take her eyes off of the used-to-be-pristine white table, because when Shojiro slipped, his puddle streaked and now it resembled the red stripes on the American flag. He was now slumped at what would be an uncomfortable angle for a living person, but it didn't seem to matter. "Is he?"  
  
Shizuka went over and felt for any pulse then listened for breathing. After a minute she stood up and shook her head. "He's dead." The three's faces brightened up as they realized exactly who they had killed.  
  
Then Junko and Shizuka's eyes shut and they fell to the floor, unconscious once more from the beatings they sustained during the fight with Shojiro.  
  
Kiyoharu was the only one still conscious.  
  
Oh shit...  
  
He took them each, one at a time, and moved them out of the clinic, which was now beginning to stink of blood. Then he went inside and fetched the instructions on how to deactivate the collars and first deactivated his own, hearing a beeping noise as it loosened from his neck and he took it off with the greatest of ease using a contraption that looked somewhat like the jumper cables used to jump a car battery. Next came Shizuka's collar. He placed two prongs on the front and back of the collar, then turned a small adjuster knob on the device and heard the beeping noise, then the collar loosened and he took it off. It left red marks on her neck. He ignored this and freed Junko from her collar, then sat down to rest. Technically there was nobody left. There would be no winner in this Program. Had that ever happened before? He decided to ponder these things. He knew a cleanup crew came afterwards to get the corpses and also knew there was a secluded cemetery somewhere with gravestones for all of the children who died in each and every single Program. But was that all? The winner also got a news feature in the prefecture where he or she won. Kiyoharu sighed and began to wonder how exactly they would report -this- Program, the fluke.   
  
All 30 students dead--GAME OVER-- report from Third Year Class A Kitagawa Junior High School Program HQ Tracking System  
  
64  
  
On November 22, 2003, America forcefully liberated Japan. The military flew and sailed in fully armed and demanded to see the Dictator. Once they were ushered into his office, a soft-spoken half-Japanese half-American soldier acted as translator between a huffy old military general and the Dictator himself while thousands, nay, millions of other soldiers stood at the ready if the Dictator opposed anything. The general came prepared with papers already signed by the President declaring his agreement to liberate Japan and turn it into a democracy with help from the American military, then demanded the Dictator sign it. The Dictator refused and the general waved his arm. All the soldiers standing behind him raised their weapons, aiming them at the Dictator's head. Finally, he caved in and signed the paper.   
  
"Thank you, sir," the general said in English, the translator doing his job. "Now I'm afraid we have to eliminate the only thing keeping Japan from prospering as a democracy."  
  
"And that would be?" the Dictator asked. The soft-spoken half-and-half boy had to translate both ways before either party understood what one another wanted.   
  
"To be honest, that one thing is you." The general motioned to a few soldiers. One placed a pair of cold metal handcuffs on the Dictator's fat wrists while the others stood beside him, guns jabbed into his waist. "Take him to the ship, boys, then steer it for Gitmo." (Author's note: Gitmo, aka Guantanamo Bay, is a prison in Cuba. It's where all the Middle Eastern terrorists go and eat Froot Loops every day because even a terrorist needs his daily value of calcium, right?)  
  
"Gitmo, sir? Isn't that where all the Middle Eastern terorrists go?"  
  
"Just go to Gitmo."  
  
"Yes, sir." The soldiers ushered the Dictator out of his office, then more soldiers arrested and took away all of the Dictator's assistants. Some of the Diet members had been programmed to believe in whatever the Dictator said, as well as much of the country, so this huffy general knew he had some work ahead of him. He knew Japan would be a piece of work, but he was ready to work with them.   
  
"Yukito," he said to the half-and-half boy.   
  
"Yes, sir?"  
  
"Yukito, the population of Japan has been brainwashed by a long line of dictators. We need to spread the word that this country is a democracy now. Go alert the main news centers in Tokyo, they'll have word out to the rest of the country before dinner's on their tables tonight. That won't take too long. Get back here as soon as possible."  
  
"Yes, sir." Yukito saluted the general as he left to go alert every news center he could find in Tokyo. Like the general guessed, it didn't take very long and the nice people at each newspaper and TV station he found promised they would get the news out as soon as possible. Yukito obediently returned to the "palace" where the Dictator used to reside and saluted the general once more.  
  
"Battalion 107 wants you on their plane. I don't know why, but they do. Go with them." The general pointed to a group of soldiers, dressed ready for flight. Yukito remembered the 107 plane, after all it was the one he flew to Japan on. He saluted the general and followed the other soldiers out to a ship painted camouflage with a number painted on the side as well as the Battalion 107 logo. Everyone loaded up into the plane, then it took off.  
  
"If I may ask," Yukito asked a woman sitting next to him, using flawless English. "What am I doing on this plane?"  
  
"We're looking for hostages and prisoners to free," the woman answered, a bit of a Southern twang showing. "Using this body heat-sensing radar, we can find any living person to rescue! Ain't that nice? We're going down south of the country first, then making a U-turn and coming back up north." The plane flew for awhile before the radar picked up three bodies.   
  
They were located on Okishima Island. A map of Okishima Island was brought up on another screen, with red areas marking places where the plane could land. The three bodies were all concentrated in one area, so the pilot chose the landing area closest to the area where three red spots showed up on an otherwise dark purple screen. Well, except for a few red spots inside of a building that was a short distance from where they were landing...  
  
They'd worry about that when they'd get there.  
  
65  
  
Kiyoharu heard the whooshing sound of an airplane overhead. 'Weird,' he thought to himself. 'Didn't they tell all airplanes to not fly over Okishima until this thing was over and done with?' He looked up at the sky to see a small green and brown dot getting bigger and bigger and becoming an unusual airplane he'd never seen before as it appeared to be hurling towards him. He ducked, putting one arm over each girl lying unconscious by him, and hoped the impact wouldn't be too hard. He heard a thumping sound, then a hissing sound, then the sound of footsteps clomping towards him. He looked up and saw Americans standing above him in military uniforms. Among all the unfamiliar faces he saw a Japanese face, who offered him a hand.  
  
"Who are you guys?" he asked the Japanese soldier.  
  
"We're Batallion 107 of the U.S. Army," the soldier answered. "I'm Sgt. Yukito Davidson. We saw you three on the radar over there in our plane. I see these two girls aren't conscious. Do you want us to take them on the plane?"  
  
"Take them on the plane, but please wait a moment. Don't take off without me." Yukito nodded at this request as Kiyoharu took up Shizuka's revolver and headed straight for the school.  
  
He reached the school quickly by running and noticed the rain finally seemed to be letting up. Now that he had no collar on, there was no way to kill him even if he did step into a forbidden zone. Bastards. Instead of barging in and hoping his revolver would work against armed soldiers with machine guns, he decided to sneak around outside the school. All of the windows were covered with black sheets of metal, except for one. Kiyoharu peeked inside so that no one inside could see even the tips of his wild bleached hair, then his eyes locked onto Mr. Toyama, receiving some rather disparaging news from his soldiers, who bowed to him and offered him their machine guns. He shook his head and they extracted the magazines from their guns, then went outside to surrender for the Americans.   
  
"No winner?" Mr. Toyama asked from inside. "And we got liberated?! DAMN YOU, CRUEL FATE!!!" he screamed, pounding the table and shaking his ashtray around. Kiyoharu took aim and fired a shot that whizzed through the window and lodged itself into Mr. Toyama's arm, then ran for it as fast as he could.   
  
'So this is what freedom feels like?' he asked as the cold wind blew around him as he ran for the camouflage-colored ship. 'This is liberation?' He returned to the ship, then asked Yukito if he could see Shizuka and Junko.  
  
"Shizuka and Junko, huh? Which is which?" Yukito asked, pointing to two cots folded out on the plane and strapped down in case of turbulence.   
  
"That one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Shizuka, whose red hair was sticking out in all direction. "Is Shizuka and that one..." Kiyoharu pointed to Junko, whose hair was also tousled and her face was dirty. "Is Junko."  
  
"And you're...?"  
  
"Kiyoharu Moritaka."  
  
"Ah-ha. Now, I want to know something. What on earth were you three doing on this island? Is it that 'Program' thing I keep hearing about?"  
  
"Yes, sir, it was."  
  
"Do you mind telling me the whole story as you heard it? I want to hear about the Program from someone who won't coat it with propaganda." Kiyoharu paused, deciding from where to begin his story, then...  
  
"Well, it all started on a school bus going from Kitagawa Junior High School in Kobe to Godknowswhere..."  
  
66  
  
The subcontracted cleanup crew arrived right on time and began to take up the bodies of almost every student in class 3-A. (Note: and now for sentimental value I will list everyone who died once more. Repitition helps people remember!) The bodies of Masao Suzuki, Kazuo Hanagata, Tomoko Daidouji, Takashi Hirai, Kanako Niimura, Shinji Asaba, Toru Niimura, Naomi Fujisaki, Daisuke Kirishima, Suzuko Harada, Sho Satsuki, Sayaka Ichiki, Akito Kanzaki, Tetsuko Matsutani, Shuko Inada, Kaoru Sengakuji, Miki Aizawa, Shinya Misao, Asuka Nishima, Junji Mitagawa, Nanako Shizawa, Shojiro Umeboshi, Fujiko Sasei, Toshiya Wakabayashi, Minami Shimada, Kazuhiko Yamatani and Sakura Yanagi were loaded into a really grisly, horribly-smelling cargo area on a helicopter and coptered up to Sapporo, which was the only place where the government could afford enough land for all the graves they would need to make. Many family members asked for their children to be cremated instead of buried, which the cleanup crew arranged because they owned the land now. Graves were enscribed for 27 children to add to the countless rows of graves that were already placed in the dreary cemetery. The cleanup crew was told everyone died, so where were the other 3? Well, it's not like they were getting paid enough to investigate that anyway. They probably drowned or something.  
  
Soon the teary families would come to decorate the graves, just like the other ones in the countless rows of this depressing place. It was truly depressing to be in that cemetery for more than an hour or so, because a person would just see the toll a dictatorship took on a society and they could almost feel their hearts shrink. Even the cleanup crew couldn't stand it and would have to take breaks.   
  
It was horrible, but now it wouldn't have to happen anymore. 


	11. Part Eleven

Battle Royale '03  
  
Part Eleven  
  
67  
  
Shizuka awoke with a killer pain in her head, so painful that if she sat up she had to lie back down very quickly to stop the throbbing. She squinted as a harsh light was stabbing her in the eyes. "Where am I?"  
  
"You're in the hospital," a doctor replied. "You suffered a concussion and we also have to give you some antibiotics. The wounds you sustained got infected, but luckily we combatted the infections quickly. I know you have an increased sensitivity to light, but you'll get over that very soon."  
  
"I feel drunk, doctor."  
  
"I know you do, Miss Arai."  
  
"Where are my friends?"  
  
"Your friends? Oh, the other two that the Americans brought in? Right here." The doctor pulled aside some curtains and revealed that Shizuka and Junko were sharing a hospital room. "Miss Mizuboshi isn't awake yet...She will be soon, though. Don't fret. She won't die."  
  
"What about Kiyoharu?"  
  
"The boy? He's in the hall getting some coffee, he'll be back as soon as possible." The doctor bowed out of the room, leaving Shizuka alone with her thoughts...and a cable TV. Of course she picked the cable TV and news about Japan's liberation was everywhere. Then there was a segment about her!!   
  
"Although it was reported that the very last Program, for Kitagawa Junior High in Kobe, ended with everyone dying, we have a report from Kobe General Hospital that the three are in stable condition except for Junko Mizuboshi, who is still unconscious as of right now." Pictures of their old student IDs were flashed onscreen, which was a rude flashback to the time when Shizuka had jet-black bobcut hair, Junko's hair wasn't as long or layered as it was now and Kiyoharu...well, he wasn't bleaching at the time. Suddenly, Junko opened her eyes, as if the report on the news actually awoke her from unconsciousness.  
  
"Hey," she said feebly.  
  
"Look," Shizuka said, pointing to the TV. "We're on the news."  
  
"Cool. What happened?"  
  
"I can't explain it. My head is throbbing." The door to the room opened and Kiyoharu entered with three cans of coffee. He looked at the TV, then walked over to Shizuka's bedside.  
  
"Hey, how are you feeling?"  
  
"I just woke up, so did Junko...we both can't stand to see light. What day is it?" Shizuka squinted to avoid that damn flourescent light that was above her head.  
  
"It's Sunday. You slept all through the rest of Saturday and it's 3:45 pm now. You two were knocked out for a very long time. I was really worried." Kiyoharu gently touched the gauze bandage wrapped around Shizuka's forehead, then retracted his hand.  
  
"What do I have on my head?"  
  
"A bandage. There's a terrible, terrible bruise under there."   
  
"Another bruise?" Shizuka was saddened by this news. Kiyoharu gently squeezed her hand, treating her as if she were so fragile that she could break into a million tiny pieces at any moment.   
  
"It'll fade, I promise. The doctor told me it would. Thank God you didn't sustain any skull fractures or damage. Just a bruise that's about ten different colors. Here, have a canned cuppa." He handed her the 'cuppa' and walked over to Junko's bed.  
  
"Same thing," he sighed, looking at her gauze. "I got you a cuppa too." He put the other cuppa on Junko's bedside table, then noticed she was holding something. "What's that?"   
  
"This?" Junko unfurled her hand to show a piece of paper that molded into a ball shape from being pent up in a fist for so long. It was somewhat stained with blood, but who cared, right? "It's the last thing I ever got from Masao. Look." She shyly handed it to Kiyoharu, who unfurled the paper. It was a simple note, written in Masao's big, blocky script, with three Chinese characters in a row. "He tells me that, translated into Japanese, it means 'I Love You'. Cheesy, huh? But the sentimental value's through the roof."  
  
"I've still got the map and class list in my school coat, wherever that is."   
  
"Now that we're a democracy," Kiyoharu began, drinking from his 'cuppa'. "You can read '1984' without risk of being killed for it. And I can listen to London Calling without having to lie about who I'm listening to."  
  
"Hey, Kiyoharu?"  
  
"Yeah?"  
  
"Tell me more about democracy. And the Clash. And everything."  
  
"Everything?" He saw Shizuka's sweet little girl nod. "All right. If I pause, it's because I need air after telling the Japanese soldier about the Program." Junko listened in as Kiyoharu explained what a democracy was, then went into a long lecture on bands he liked and hated. Shizuka listened intently to the whole discussion.  
  
68  
  
Shizuka, Kiyoharu and Junko were watching TV when a nurse came to the door.  
  
"Um, Miss Arai? There's someone here for you. There are also people for you, Miss Mizuboshi, and you, Mr. Moritaka."  
  
"Bring them in," Shizuka commanded, finishing off her cuppa. She heard the sounds of people running up the stairs and then a swarm of adults burst into the room. First, a tall woman with exactly the same pale skin and facial structure as Shizuka; a woman with permed hair crying hysterically on the shoulder of her husband, who was trying to console her; and then a woman with a beaming smile on her face and a cross necklace on.   
  
"Mom?" Shizuka asked.  
  
"Mom? Dad?" Junko asked.  
  
"Mom?" Kiyoharu asked.  
  
"You three...you didn't die! Oh, it's a miracle! The Lord saved my son," Mrs. Moritaka commented, smothering Kiyoharu in a gigantic bear hug which Shizuka giggled at.   
  
"Shizuka...you're alive," Mrs. Arai whispered.   
  
"Hey, Mom," Shizuka said ever-so-casually. "Where's stepdad?"  
  
"Oh, he went into jail, just like I said he would. He can apply for parole in...about 25 years, and by then you'll be an adult and he'll be old as dirt." Mrs. Arai smiled. "How long are you gonna be in here?"  
  
"I'm not sure, you should ask Kiyoharu, the doctors probably told him everything while we were knocked out."  
  
"Mom, Dad, I hurt my leg," Junko complained. "I might not be able to run for a while."  
  
"Oh, that's quite all right, baby, don't worry. Just heal and get better. Then come out and see the new Japan. It's so wonderful! They're already building strange things like "McDonalds" and "Starbucks". Also, the black market became a legitimate shopping mall! Isn't that great? Now you can keep buying those Nikes that make you seem to go faster, not those cruddy domestic shoes," Mrs. Mizuboshi gushed on and on about democracy. "I'm in an eternal debt to the Americans for doing this. And after decades of them being portrayed as the villain, too! Imagine that they would help us in the end!"   
  
After jubilant talk between the children and the adults, a doctor came in.  
  
"Oh...sorry to interrupt anything. Um, the two girls can go now. They don't have to be treated for anything else. We'll just give them some sample packs of antibiotics and send them on their merry way." The two girls struggled to get out of their hospital beds, then noticed they were still in their grimy, dirty, bloodied school uniforms.   
  
"We'll have to take you three shopping," Mrs. Mizuboshi pointed out. The girls perked up. Shizuka noted that her Chuck Taylors were so muddy and wet that they hardly looked like the pretty, shiny, clean black pair she purchased from a girl with three different hair colors so long ago. It seemed mind-boggling that now she could buy the same shoes without the risk of being arrested or killed. Of course she wanted to go, get out of the hospital, even though she had the pain of a migraine headache pounding in her head.  
  
69  
  
The fire crackled as someone threw in an eighth-grade world history book. Shizuka hurled her art history book in the growing bonfire, the art book being thrown in because it only praised Japanese art and not American art. A gigantic seventh-grade literature book made the fire's flames lick higher up in the sky. It was December, almost the end of term, and the students of Kitagawa Jr. High were burning their old propagandistic textbooks. New textbooks were slated to come over holiday break. Exams were canceled and the students couldn't be any more delirious with excitement, as a vacation without the stress of awaiting exam results was right around the corner. The smell of burning plastic and paper permeated the air as the kids saw the high school bonfires growing larger and larger. The entire city of Kobe turned just a few simple bonfires into a full-out matsuri, with food available from small stands and games for the little kids after they threw in their books praising Mommy, Daddy and the Dictator.   
  
"Isn't it great?" Junko asked, eating some almonds coated in cinnamon and sugar. She took out her bookbag and threw her history book into the flames. "I feel so free. I always knew there was a world outside of this country but never knew how to get there or see it." The kids were awaiting a brand-new subject which was forbidden before Japan's liberation--learning English. Authentic English speakers were even going to teach the class, something the kids never heard of before. Junko shivered. The weather was getting much colder and someone predicted snow would be coming very soon.   
  
Shizuka threw her algebra book in. Yes, even math books found ways to be propagandistic. In fact, the staff of the school were even throwing in their teacher's editions because those also praised a nonexistant Dictator. Once the supply of propaganda textbooks ran dry, people began burning other propagandistic items. The fire burned on almost all night long.   
  
Shizuka and Kiyoharu sat by a stand selling okonomiyaki. Shizuka was eating a shish kabob, then she swallowed a bite of chicken and began to talk.  
  
"You know..." she began. "I found out the location of that Program cemetery. It's in Sapporo. Once I turn 15 I could get a holiday part-time job to pay for train tickets and the three of us could go up there. Junko's been wanting to since the Program ended."   
  
"No need to even stress over getting a job, Shizuka," Kiyoharu replied. "I'm sure we could get our parents to let us go. It's a good purpose, right? We're not going up to Sapporo to get drunk or anything." Shizuka giggled and had to point the shish kabob away from her eyes so she wouldn't have an accident.   
  
"You know, I still can't get over the fact that our whole class is dead. I don't think I'll ever be able to. I'm going to cry so much when the yearbook comes out." After the three returned to school, they were sorted into class 3-B, then renamed class 3-B 3-A because they needed a new 3-A. The 3-B kids gave the three an incredibly hard time when they first transferred in, referring to them as the zombies and asking how many kids they killed all the time, even though the three were probably the only players that didn't kill everyone in sight. Shizuka's eyes got misty at this thought, the thought of the yearbook reflecting a happy, full class 3-A even though 27 of the kids no longer existed.   
  
"Hey..." Kiyoharu hugged her. "It's gonna hurt for a while, a long time, but part of living is moving on and accepting, right? I think Junko is just now starting to come to terms with Masao's death. It really broke her inside, didn't it? She still has the paper she showed me in the hospital."   
  
"I guess you're right. Which reminds me, are you going to take any entrance exams?"  
  
"Yeah, just to the public high schools, though. I don't want to burden my parents by making them pay tuitions."   
  
"I'm doing that, too. I really hope we can get into the same school."  
  
"Shizuka, don't you know that entrance exam woes only start coming up in March? It's way too early for this talk. Besides, both your birthday and Christmas are soon. Aren't you usually more joyful around this time of year?"  
  
"Last year I wasn't because of the stepdad, but the greatest birthday and Christmas presents I could ever get are the presents of freedom. Freedom from an abusive family member and freedom from the iron claws of a dictatorship. Sure, money, my learner's license and other assorted gifts would also be great, but freedom has to be the best one I've gotten this year." Shizuka leaned her head on Kiyoharu's shoulder. "Maybe someday we can truly be normal schoolkids again?"  
  
"That's a good thought," Kiyoharu replied as the two watched the bonfires burning on and on.  
  
70  
  
The day after Christmas, the three got on a train bound from Kobe to Sapporo. It was going to be a long ride, so everyone made sure to pack their CDs. Amazing new Japanese rock bands were starting to come out of the bomb shelter "arenas" and get signed to major labels, so there was an assortment of English and American rock/punk and Japanese rock in the CD collections of the entire trio. Shizuka locked away her old copy of 1984 in a fishing tackle box, because now she had a shiny new legitimately translated copy. Even though a cloud of gloom hung over the trio because they weren't going to Sapporo to have fun, they decided to make the best of the trip up there. Junko talked about a boy in 3-B, ending every sentence about him with, "I don't know..." She remembered exactly what Masao told her, "do it for the one who fell through the cracks". And she held a bouquet of mixed-color roses in her hand the entire train ride.   
  
It was already snowing in Sapporo. Everyone was walking around hidden under layer after layer of clothing, and here came these three kids wearing only two layers of clothes. Although they were cold, they made the best of it. They walked around downtown Sapporo, asking passers-by if they knew where the Program cemetery was. A lot of people were dumbfounded but eventually a nice old man in a ramen shop told them the exact location. Kiyoharu thanked her profusely, then asked how he knew where it was when it seemed nobody else did.  
  
"My grandson was in the Program," the old man replied sadly. "The one that just ended a month ago, you know?" He squinted at the three again. "Wait a minute, you look kind of like the three children I saw on the news! Did you know my grandson?"  
  
"Who was your grandson?" Junko asked.   
  
"His name was Toru Niimura. He also had a sister, Kanako. Did you know them?" The three exchanged nods. "Do you think they're in a better place now?" The man looked over at a small corner behind the counter, where framed school pictures of Toru, Kanako and a picture of an old woman dressed in a full kimono were surrounded by candles and incense.   
  
"I know they're in a better place now, sir," Shizuka replied. Junko and Kiyoharu nodded in agreement.   
  
"Please, could you take these to their graves?" The man retrieved some flowers from behind the counter. "Thank you so much. When you're done, come back here and feel free to order ramen...on the house."  
  
With the bouquets for Masao, Toru and Kanako in hand, the three went straight for the Program cemetery. It was in a deserted field outside of town and the graves were tipped with snow. Other parents and children were also there, either walking through the rows looking for someone or mourning at someone's grave.   
  
"Over there..." Junko pointed to a row of older-looking graves. "...are the graves for the first Programs, all the way up to the 1970s. Over here..." She pointed to a row of newer-looking graves. "...are the graves for the second batch of Programs, all the way up to 2003. I suppose we go to the newest ones?" Shizuka and Kiyoharu noticed tears forming in her eyes already as she walked through the snow, looking for Masao's grave. Finally, she found it. She got down on her knees in front of it and placed the roses in a slot on the grave just for flowers or incense.   
  
"I've missed you every day," she told the grave as Kiyoharu and Shizuka looked on. "Not a single day goes by when I don't think of you, Masao, and I really do think I loved you, too." She sniffled, then decided what the hell and began to cry. "I hope you're in a better place now, no, I'm sure you are. But I've got one question to ask you." Sniffle. "Are Tetsuko and Sakura still whores or what?"   
  
Shizuka broke down and began to sob, too. Then she whispered for Kiyoharu to go over there and hug Junko.  
  
"But, but I'm with you..."  
  
"Just do it. She needs one right now."  
  
"But..."  
  
"Look, Kiyoharu, I'm on my period right now and I'm as emotionally charged as they come, but I am also fierce and violent when I'm on the rag. Now go over there and hug her like I'm going to take a picture and get it published on a greeting card, okay? I'll go put the roses on the Niimura graves." Kiyoharu obeyed and smothered Junko in a hug as Shizuka walked off to look for the Niimura graves.  
  
"Kiyo...haru? You're hugging m-m-me?"  
  
"Of course. You're my friend, aren't you, and friends can hug each other without feeling any romantic feelings inside. Besides, you definitely need it. I miss Masao too, he was a great friend and just all around an awesome guy to be with." He looked at the roses, which Junko didn't unwrap from their floral bag. "Here, I'll unwrap these for you. Someone who tends this graveyard will fill it with water when it's not freezing every day." He delicately took the flowers out from their bag and placed them in the holder, only getting pricked by thorns three times.   
  
"Thanks, Kiyoharu," Junko said gratefully. "But hey, do you suppose he never got the courage to tell me?"  
  
"Tell you...how he felt?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"That's the thing about guys." He helped Junko to her feet. "We bottle up things. We fear rejection probably more than you girls do, so we bottle up how we truly feel inside and try to mask it. But eventually, the bottle breaks and the mask falls off. Masao, in my opinion, couldn't have chosen a better time to confess. Shizuka confessed to me during the Program, too."  
  
"I suppose the fact that you could die at any moment arouses some kind of emotion inside?" Junko tried to shrug that off with a 'heh'.   
  
"Probably so," Shizuka butted in, having placed the roses on both graves. "I want to be a psychologist someday so I can figure out these things." The three looked to the sky, snowflakes falling and resting on their rosy cheeks. They sighed, thinking about how 27 of their peers were now up there, beyond the clouds, then cast one last look at the graves before leaving the graveyard. They acted on Mr. Niimura's promise of ramen and had a meal, then took the train bound for Kobe back home. 


	12. Epilogue

Battle Royale '03  
  
Epilogue ~Never shall we return, from conflict we must learn~  
  
Shizuka Arai, Kiyoharu Moritaka and Junko Mizuboshi were, as of the end of spring term, official students of First Kobe Public High School. Sure, the name wasn't anything to write home about, but First Kobe gave potential students a deceptively hard entrance exam. It took Shizuka three tries to pass, Junko two and Kiyoharu four. (You were allowed to retake entrance exams for any school you wanted, but after the first time, you had to pay. The board at your prospective high school just took the highest score from all your retakes and counted that, not any of the others.) All three of them got jobs over the summer after school let out. Shizuka worked at a place that didn't exist in May 2003, a little place called Starbucks. Junko worked at a clothing store in the mall which the former black market occupied and Kiyoharu worked at, what else?, a music store.   
  
The bell above the door at Starbucks chimed and all the high school-aged baristas shouted welcomes at the customer who entered. Shizuka manned the register.  
  
"Welcome to Starbucks, would you like to try our daily special?" she asked as she was trained to. The customer, who wore a hood on his head and sunglasses over his eyes, read the nametag on Shizuka's chest that proclaimed her full name.  
  
"Ah, Miss Arai. You managed to escape, no?" The man unhooded himself and removed his glasses. Shizuka gasped as she saw Mr. Toyama standing before her, wanting some coffee. "Tell me, how did you escape?"  
  
"You want the truth? Masao gave us instructions on how to. It was so simple! He just took apart a radio and all the parts were there! Look at us now. Now, what can I make for you today?"  
  
"You can make me a venti mocha with whipped cream on top and..." Mr. Toyama drew a small gun. "Your blood mixed in." The other girl at the registers screamed, "A GUN!" and everyone in the store ducked, even Shizuka.   
  
"Mitsuko," she commanded the other girl. "Go call the police."  
  
"You'll be okay alone?"  
  
"Alone? We've got twenty customers in here, they can fight him off!"   
  
"Right." Mitsuko crawled on the ground to a phone and dialed the emergency number, then cupped her hand over the receiver and whispered to someone on the other end. Shizuka made sure Mitsuko was on the phone before standing back up.  
  
"Mr. Toyama, sir, may I ask why exactly do you want to kill me?"  
  
"Nobody survived the 2003 Kitagawa Program. But three wriggled out. I'm going to find all three of you and kill you all!"  
  
"Hey, who the hell do you think you are, threatening an innocent girl like that?" a 20-something man asked. "I oughta kick your ass right here, right now, old man!"  
  
"No! Nobody do anything!" Shizuka screamed. "Just stay calm and pretend there ISN'T a megalomaniac with a gun ready to blow my fucking brains out." Everyone immediately went back to their food and drink. The police came a few minutes later to arrest Mr. Toyama and take him away in a police car, but Shizuka was frozen to the spot. The deranged look in his eyes...it haunted her.   
  
Was this how it was going to be?  
  
Was the Program going to haunt her life forever?  
  
'No,' she quickly decided. 'I'm going to be strong and come out of this the winner. I won the Program. I won the Battle Royale. I am Shizuka Arai, 15 years old, freshman at First Kobe Public High School, and I am strong!!'  
  
Far in the distance is cast a shadow   
  
Symbol of our freedom will bring us salvation   
  
On the horizon hope for Tomorrow   
  
Sweeping across the land to give us unity   
  
Look to the heavens with tears of triumph   
  
To cherish a new life and suffer not again   
  
Lift up your spirits from all destruction   
  
Never shall we return from conflict we must learn  
  
The End 


End file.
